


Brightwork

by notoska



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Discussion of Past Graphic Violence to Children, Don't have enough space in the summary for everything I want to tell you, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Gen, High level summary: If Hydra was truly the villain we fear it to be, I will add tags as the piece progresses, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Please heed the graphic depictions of violence tag!, Steve sets out to unravel the real history of Hydra, Suicide Attempt, Violence by Children Toward Other Children and Adults, and the path back home stretches to its breaking point., discussion of suicide, self neglect, there would be no homecoming. Bucky claws his way out to tell Steve the truth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-25
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-02-26 22:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 76,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2668874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoska/pseuds/notoska
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They lied to you. I lied to you. You died like you were supposed to and that was the end of it. But you’re back,” Bucky’s voice lifts helpless, disbelieving, “You’re alive. And you need to know. That you’re not who you think you are. You’re an orphan. Your mother gave you up the day you were born. They found you in the orphanage and the tests started right away. They never stopped testing you. They made you sick so you’d find a way to survive. They sent the bullies so you’d learn to fight.”</p><p>“What are you talking about? Who’s ‘they’?” Steve’s voice is too sharp.</p><p>“Erskine. Zola. Hydra before it was Hydra,” Bucky gestures through the air, “They’ve always had us, Steve. From day one.” His eyes focus on Steve’s face, “You’ve always been a science experiment.”</p><p>“Bucky,” Steve voice is dismayed, “That doesn’t— Why would they make me sick?”</p><p>Bucky looks at him for a second. “Blond hair, blue eyes. You had all the right ingredients. But Erskine knew it was what was inside that counted,” Bucky knocks two fingers against his chest and Steve realizes they’re shaking, “He didn’t just find a guy who would jump on a grenade, Steve,” Bucky’s eyebrows lift, “He made one.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Available in 中文 here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/3653088
> 
> Thank you reuntahl2002 for your translation work!! :)

 

* * *

 

  _When the asset must jump, he will jump immediately. If he must, he will jump without a landing point in sight. For it is better to fall and take measures to guard against injury or death, than linger and meet certain death in the hands of a pursuing foe._

 

* * *

 

Steve’s knees bump the table in the hospital’s coffee shop. He shifts in his seat to draw his bag out of the walkway and between the legs of his chair.

“Yep, good to go,” Steve keeps his voice low, and his mouth close to the phone’s mic.

“Cool,” Steve can hear papers rustling on the other end of the phone and turns up the volume to hear Sam better, “Just got off the phone with Maria. She can get us out there but that’s it.”

Steve frowns at the table top, rotates his paper coffee cup a quarter turn, “That’s fine.”

“Alright, so, tomorrow at 6 am then. She said a security escort would pick us up in front of Reagan.”

Steve hums in reply.

“I guess they like to take things one at a time, so they’ve only filed a flight plan for the first stop.”

“Romania?”

“Yeah.”

“And then what? We call her again to set up the next flight?”

“Yeah. She said 2 hours notice.”

Steve runs his thumb along his bottom lip. “And if we don’t have that kind of time?”

“We hit the panic button.”

“And what’s the response time on that?”

“She didn’t say. Fast.”

Steve says nothing.

“Really fast.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it is. Just trying to plan ahead. What about the extra set of wings?”

“No go. Just the one. So just for emergencies. But I think we’re fine. Maria sent me satellite images and all ten of these places are underground. Wings are just for the getaway.”

“Okay.”

“You’ve got the original file right?”

“Yeah.”

“She wants you to burn it.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“I figured.”

Steve looks up at the line winding out the coffee shop door and takes a sip of his drink.

“So what did the doctor say?” Sam sounds like he’s moving through his house, opening doors.

“Nothing really. Just some more x-rays. I’m fine.”

“Mm hm,” Sam murmurs like he’s waiting for more.

Steve lets the silence hang.

“Okay, see you later on then. Swing by to make sure I packed everything you need.”

“Alright, thanks Sam.”

Steve slips his phone into his inside jacket pocket. He leans forward to lift the file from his bag. There’s a plain manila envelope around the outside to cover the Cyrillic. Steve flips straight to the cryogenic storage log in the back. It’s incomplete. Just 1957 through 1991. Ten locations in total. Some used again and again, some used exclusively for a few years, and a few used only once or twice. Steve picks through the dates marked with the Romanian location. He’s halfway down the page when his phone rings. He marks his place with his pointer finger and answers the phone one handed.

“Captain, extraction on the roof in three minutes.” Maria’s voice is sharp with urgency.

Steve jerks upright, closing the file in a rush, “What?”

“Your Romanian bunker just went up in flames. If you want to go, you need to go now.”

“Went up in flames?” Steve’s voice is too loud. He shoves the file in his bag and runs into the hospital lobby, “What does that mean? What happened?” He spins for a second before remembering where the staircase is.

“That’s all I know. We had a recon team nearby.” Steve keeps the phone pressed hard to his ear as he sprints up the stairs, “They saw it go up. I have a chopper landing on the roof in 30 seconds and it is not cleared to be there. You have a very tight window Steve.”

“Almost there,” Steve grunts and leaps up three stairs at a time. Four more stories and he’s at the top, flinging open the roof access door and running out into the sun. The helicopter is slowly lowering itself onto the Medevac pad and a woman with a high-vis vest is desperately trying to wave it away. Steve doesn’t slow, sprinting straight past the woman and up to the helicopter. He jumps through the open side door, catching the arm of an agent in black tactical gear. The helicopter begins to rise before Steve’s feet are even through the doorway. 

He slides into one of the seats and clasps one of several seat belts loosely around his body. The helicopter drone is deafening. Steve clumsily hangs up his phone and motions for a headset. The agent across from him hands one over. Their eyes are covered with an opaque black visor so Steve nods his thanks at the helmet.

He pulls the headset into place and says, “Can someone put me through to Officer Hill?”

“Already here, Steve,” Maria’s cool voice through the speakers.

“Where’s Sam?”

“I’ve got him. Change of plans. Flying out of BWI as soon as you land. Just got word that the other nine targets are up in smoke too. So let’s hope you’ve got the right one.”

Steve grimaces, “I hope so too.”

“You remembered to pack, right?” That faint hint of humor around the edges of her words.

“Yeah. Well, Sam did.”

“Hope he remembered the toothbrushes with a combat helicopter in his front yard.”

“Honestly, I think he’s used to it by now.”

“Good luck Cap.”

“Thanks.”

 

* * *

 

“ A little under an hour to go, Cap,” the pilot’s voice comes low and smooth through the jet’s speakers. This is a military flight but he has the mannerisms of a civilian pilot.

Steve nods at Sam, who nods back. Sam’s duffel bags are lying in a heap in the plane’s wide aisle. They’ve packed everything they hope they’ll need for two weeks in the Romanian wilderness. There is a small black bag at the bottom of Steve’s pack that holds everything they hope they’ll never need: antidotes to common and uncommon poisons, Potassium Iodide to protect against nuclear radiation, and a few rows of pills and vials with sparse labels like ‘In Case of Electric Shock’ and ‘Induce Vomiting’. 

They jump out the back hatch a little over 1 km from the bunker. Steve can taste ash in the air on the way down. 

They drop into a tiny clearing and narrowly avoid hanging up their parachutes on the trees. Sam cuts the chutes free with a serrated knife and Steve leads them uphill with his eyes on his GPS. Someone at SHIELD glued a tiny compass to the back a few months ago. Steve uses it as often as he uses the GPS itself.

Steve doesn’t speak until he can see the air turning grey with smoke, “Do you think we’re too late?”

“You’re worried about the timing?” Sam stops too, meeting Steve’s eyes. They had this exact conversation on the plane, repeating it now for the benefit of any ears in the forest, “Like they knew we were coming.”

Steve looks down with false concern for a moment. He says nothing and starts walking again.

They see the fires before the ruins. The underbrush is dry from the late-summer heat and there are already large brown swaths where fire has chewed it up to soot. Steve leads them past the tangled fences around the periphery, over the rocky debris covered with a dusting of soil. They reach the edge of the bunker, now a canyon, and peer down into the wreck. Sunlight illuminates five underground stories and the unsettlingly cold air blowing up from the depths hints at many more.

Sam secures a rappelling anchor to what used to be a structural column and drops the ropes down the hole. Steve drops in first. As soon as he descends below ground level he can see the complex is much larger than it appears from above. Long hallways branch off, narrowing to dark grey nothingness in the distance. Steve shines a flashlight down the corridor and even its light doesn’t reveal the end of the passage.

Steve drops again, pushing off with his feet to swing down to the second story below the ground. The floors don’t seem to share a common footprint. The south wall on the first floor was cracked and soil could be seen through the gaps, but the south side of the second floor is a wide open space with cafeteria seating.

Steve hears Sam begin to descend above him and calls out, “This place is huge.”

“Great,” Sam calls back sarcastically, “We should have brought more lights.”

Steve pauses for a long moment before saying, “There’s no one here.”

Steve drops further, past the third floor and the fourth. He kicks off the fourth floor’s edge, gnarled with bent rebar, and drops. He’s at the limit of the sunlight’s reach now. Everything is washed in weak grey light and the smoke is growing acrid and thick. Steve steps onto the fifth floor and pulls some slack in his line. He pauses to wipe his sleeve over the back of his eyes.

Steve looks up. He’s in a lab with a bank of mostly broken screens along the wall. The few remaining unbroken screens reflect the dull light around Steve’s silhouette. It’s a strangely small, incomplete space, like a room in a dollhouse with half of its walls cut away. Steve turns to see a black chair in the far corner and freezes. There’s a human figure slouched against the wall behind the chair. Steve stands still, breathing slow though adrenaline has already sent his heart racing. It’s not moving.

Steve takes a step closer. The figure lifts its head. Steve sees the blood before the face, trailing down from his nose to his mouth. The dark smudges across his forehead obscure the shape of his brow. Steve’s stomach lurches.

Bucky speaks first, “Hi Steve.”

Steve’s on his knees in the rubble a second later, pulling at Bucky’s torn jacket. Bucky’s head rocks back like he can’t hold it upright. There’s something playing at the corner of his mouth like a smile.

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice cracks.

“Yeah,” Bucky responds immediately. The corner of his mouth drops and his eyes cloud.

“Sam, I got him!” Steve yells over his shoulder. He pulls Bucky up with one hand gripping his jacket and the other under Bucky’s arm. Bucky’s feet slide uselessly over the dirty tile and scuff rocks aside as he scrambles for footing.

“There’s another bomb. Steve—thirty, forty seconds.”

“Okay, okay,” Steve’s clipping a spare harness around Bucky with steady, quick hands, “Sam, head back up! Bucky says there’s another bomb!”

Steve turns on the ascender and they beginning zipping up the line. Bucky’s staring down, past his feet, into the hole. Steve says nothing on the way up, just watches Bucky’s features sharpen as they rise into the light.

At the top, Steve heaves them both over the edge and hustles Bucky behind a still-standing guard tower before working the line loose from his harness. If Bucky’s count is correct, they have ten to twenty seconds before the bomb detonates.

“Sam, are you safe?” Steve yells without direction.

“Yep. You good?” The muffled reply sounds distant.

“We’re good.”

Steve heaves Bucky to his feet again and heads for a tower 20 yards further back. They’re just 5 yards from cover when Bucky trips. Steve doesn’t bother to right him, just pulls his dead weight, one arm around Bucky’s waist, his feet dragging in the dirt, until they round the corner. He drops Bucky by the wall and kneels next to him. He’s pushing and pulling Bucky into a duck-and-cover position when Bucky grabs his arm. 

“Steve,” his eyes are intense and steady, “Didn’t you think it was strange?”

“What?” Steve’s brow furrows and he shakes his head. He puts his arm on Bucky’s shoulder to pull him down.

“Didn’t you think it was strange? When it was me?”

Steve pushes him down, shaking his head, “Not now.”

“Wasn’t it unbelievable? That of all the people they could have chosen—” Bucky coughs and steadies his voice, “Of all the people they could have frozen in time? That they chose me?” Bucky searches his face and Steve stares back.

“Even if they picked you,” Bucky touches Steve’s chest with a fingertip, “You died.” He shakes his head weakly, “Why would they choose me?”

Steve’s jaw is clenched tight. There’s anger buzzing behind his eyes as he turns his gaze to the ground.

“They gave another nobody all the power in the world,” Bucky waits until Steve looks up, “Can you believe it, Steve?”

The bomb goes off. Light first, then sound. They aren’t far enough away to experience that unnatural gap between the flash and the deafening crack. The explosion rips up the ground, sends forth a rush of smoke and fire, and chases it with a roar so loud it registers as pain instead of sound.

Dirt rains down and it’s so familiar that Steve almost calls for a medic. He stares at the ground and waits for the ringing in his ears to fade. The high-pitched deafness subsides and Bucky’s voice drifts in.

Steve looks up. Bucky is sitting against the wall with his head tipped back. Dirt gathering on his upturned face. His eyes are closed and he’s still talking, “—you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t believe it.”

Steve nudges Bucky’s knee, “Hey.”

Bucky’s eyes open but he doesn’t move, “Don’t believe it, Steve. It’s not true. You’re not a nobody. They picked you when you were three days old. They told me. You’re very special.”

“Bucky,” Steve can’t look at his face, “It’s gonna be okay. You’re sick. Don’t worry about all that right now.”

“No— Steve,” Bucky pulls himself a little more upright, “You need to know. Because you still think there’s then and now,” Bucky waves his hand in a wobbly line from left to right, “but it’s all the same. It’s always been this way.”

Steve kneels and pulls Bucky up onto his feet. He dips an arm around Bucky’s back and pulls Bucky tight to his side. He seems to be getting weaker and weaker.

“Sam, you okay?” Yelling over his shoulder again.

“All good. Is that all that’s coming?”

Steve asks Bucky in a hushed voice, “Are there more bombs?”

Bucky nods.

“More coming, more bombs coming,” Steve turns his head away from Bucky’s to yell, “Call our ride.”

“Already on it.”

Steve pulls Bucky in the direction of Sam’s voice. Sam walks out from behind a mound of rubble to take Bucky’s other side wordlessly. Bucky doesn’t react to the contact.

“Maria said twenty minutes, tops.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a helicopter so we need to get to a clearing.” Sam keeps his eyes straight ahead and Bucky keeps his eyes on the ground.

“She knows we need medical attention?”

“Yep.”

“There’s a clearing 200 meters east,” Bucky’s voice is scratchy and quiet.

Sam changes direction without so much as a glance at Bucky. Steve watches Bucky’s profile for a few steps before turning his eyes straight ahead. They walk in silence. 

The clearing is grassy and symmetrical. It’s clearly intended to be a landing area. Steve catches Sam’s eye but sees no suspicion there. They lower Bucky against a tree trunk and sit down in the grass. Steve and Sam are facing the path back to the bunker. Sam’s hand is resting on his belt, a few inches from his pistol.

“Okay, listen,” Bucky draws a breath with his hands braced against his knees, “We don’t have a lot of time.” He’s looking directly at Steve.

“Bucky, please just rest,” Steve interrupts him.

“No time,” Bucky swallows, “Listen to me, Steve.” His voice is sharp and final. Steve watches him.

“They lied to you. I lied to you. You died like you were supposed to and that was the end of it. But you’re back,” Bucky’s voice lifts helpless, disbelieving, “You’re alive. And you need to know. That you’re not who you think you are. You’re an orphan. Your mother gave you up the day you were born,” Steve interrupts with dropped eyes and a shake of his head. Bucky continues, “They found you in the orphanage and the tests started right away. They never stopped testing you. They made you sick so you’d find a way to survive. They sent the bullies so you’d learn to fight.”

“What are you talking about? Who’s ‘they’?” Steve’s voice is too sharp. He feels Sam watching him from the corner of his eye.

“Erskine. Zola. Hydra before it was Hydra,” Bucky gestures through the air, “They’ve always had us, Steve. From day one.” His eyes focus on Steve’s face, “You’ve always been a science experiment.”

“Bucky,” Steve voice is dismayed, “That doesn’t— Why would they make me sick?”

Bucky looks at him for a second. “Blond hair, blue eyes. You had all the right ingredients. But Erskine knew it was what was inside that counted,” Bucky knocks two fingers against his chest and Steve realizes they’re shaking, “He didn’t just find a guy who would jump on a grenade, Steve,” Bucky’s eyebrows lift, “He made one.”

Steve stares back at him.

“I was your keeper,” Bucky sneers around the words, “I made sure their subject didn’t die.” Bucky’s chest convulses once. He spits, hatred darkening his eyes, “You don’t wanna hear the truth but you deserve it. I’m not your friend. I let them hurt you.”

“Stop,” Steve cuts him off, “It’s not true, Bucky. I don’t know what they told you—”

“They didn’t tell me anything,” Bucky raises his voice over Steve’s and it wavers, “I saw the drugs they gave you. I cleaned you up after those fights.”

Steve is yelling over him, “Bucky, stop, _stop it_.”

Bucky yells back, growing more animated, “I saved your ass when they pushed you too hard. You think normal kids get in half as many fights as you got in?” Bucky cuts a sharp line through the air and his hands shake at the end of it, “The world’s not full of people that want to hurt weak little kids. They came for you. They followed orders,” Bucky’s teeth are bared, “Just like me.”

“Why would they do that, Bucky,” Steve takes a breath to calm himself, “That doesn’t make any sense. Erskine would never—”

“You don’t know him,” Bucky’s voice cracks with sudden rage, “You don’t know Erskine. You don’t know me. You have no idea what the hell was going on—” Bucky starts coughing and can’t seem to draw a breath properly.

“Come on, Buck, calm down.” Steve is touching his shoulder, “We were just kids. Listen to yourself. We were just—”

Bucky wheezes, “I was never a kid,” and Steve almost laughs in confusion. Bucky fights his lungs to say, “Listen to me. I was never a kid. You don’t know a tenth of the things I’ve done.” Suddenly his eyes are black and Steve feels cold, “This isn’t the worst of me,” Bucky lets his hand rest limp on his chest, “Not by a long shot.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two new content tags have been added for graphic depictions of Drug Addiction and Drug Withdrawal (I'll add a heads up in the notes whenever a new tag is added! Happy reading!)

* * *

  

_The asset must understand the value of a life. Though he can kill without question when ordered to do so, he must take measures to keep his teammates alive, as they may eventually prove valuable._

 

* * *

 

The white noise of the forest rises in volume for a moment before the helicopter blades’ rhythm distinguishes itself. Sam stands, takes four steps into the clearing, and sends up a flare. Seconds later, the helicopter appears overhead and starts to climb down the smoke trail.

 Steve and Sam help Bucky into the helicopter. He can’t stand on his own. They stretch Bucky out on the padded floor. Three medical technicians flurry around him, checking vitals, inserting an IV.

“Do you know what’s wrong?” 

Steve looks up at the technician that’s yelling over the helicopter drone, “What?”

“Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

“No,” Steve shakes his head and realizes his hand is on Bucky’s shoulder.

The technician turns to Bucky, “Sir, can you tell me what hurts? Do you know what’s wrong?”

Bucky’s mouth moves but the sound is drowned out.

Steve leans in, ear just above Bucky’s lips and says, “Say it again, Buck.”

“Withdrawal.”

Steve lifts his head and stares down at Bucky in confusion, “What?”

“Withdrawal,” Bucky swallows at the end of the word.

“What did he say?” The technician is leaning over Steve’s shoulder.

“He just said ‘withdrawal.’”

The technician’s answer is brisk, almost impatient, “Well keep talking to him, try to figure out what he’s coming off of.”

Steve leans in, watching Bucky’s eyes struggle to focus on him, “What, uh— What were you— What are you— What drugs, Bucky? Do you know?”

Bucky laughs. It’s a joyless sound that chokes him on the way out. He murmurs, “Why would they tell me?”

Steve’s brow draws together, “Something Hydra gave you?”

Bucky nods.

“What did it do?”

“Kept me coming back.”

Steve looks down at him. His stomach feels like it’s full of sludge.

“I’ve never—” Bucky pauses, his face contorts, and he holds his breath for a second, “They, uh—” Bucky is struggling to breathe, he keeps lifting his head off the floor, “Withdrawal— is worse than death.” He looks right at Steve, “They made sure— I knew that.”

“Alright, alright Buck.” Steve brushes Bucky’s hair out of his face, “We’re gonna get through this. You’re going to be fine. Stay with me. Just hang on,” Steve’s throat closes. He swallows twice and coughs into his shoulder. His eyes begin to well when they’re off Bucky’s face. The sensation makes Steve angry. He turns back to Bucky, “Everything probably feels all wrong right now. We’ll sort it out. Just stay with me, okay?” Steve can see a technician attaching a bag of fluid to Bucky’s IV. 

“I don’t think— Steve, I’m not gonna— Just remember what I said, okay? Okay? I want you to know the truth.”

Bucky’s face has gone sickly white. He’s sweating so hard it’s dripping off his forehead. Steve looks down and says to Bucky’s heaving chest, “Okay, okay, you’re gonna be okay.”

“That’s it. That’s all I wanted— to do.” 

“Just hold on, Bucky. We’re almost there.”

Bucky turns his head to the side and retches. It rips a horrible sound from his throat. His body tries to curl in on itself and the technicians scramble to hold him down. Bucky throws up twice more, gasping for air with wet sounds that make Steve feel sick. 

Even when his body is empty it wrings him out again and again, dry heaving like he has something more to give. Steve can’t look at him and can’t stop touching him. He kneels on the helicopter floor with his hand on Bucky’s back and his eyes down. The technicians spend the hour-long flight to a SHIELD-approved hospital forcing yellow liquid down Bucky’s throat and watching him throw it up again.

 

* * *

 

“He was against the wall. Sitting down with his knees pulled in to his chest. Not moving.”

“He called out to you?”

“No I saw him first. I was standing there looking around and I just saw him sitting there.”

“And he spoke to you.”

“Yeah. He said, ‘Hi Steve.’”

“He knows you.”

“Sort of.”

“More than he did in D.C.”

“Yeah.”

“You think he was waiting for you?”

“I don’t know.”

Sam swirls his paper cup full of hospital coffee. There’s a tray of deflated pastries and sliced fruit from the cafeteria on the table in front of them. Sam ate half of a slice of toast and left the rest. Steve hasn’t touched it. 

“Do you think he’s going to be okay?”

“No use thinking about it like that. Take it a day at a time. Right now you have to focus on helping him get healthy.”

“Yeah,” Steve stares at the thin apple slices turning brown around the edges, “I mean, it’s not healthy to— to not know what’s real and what’s not, you know?”

“True. But he really believes what he’s saying. It won’t do any good to argue with him.”

“I’m not—” Steve looks up with a jerk, “I won’t argue with him. I just want to help." 

“I know.”

Steve stares down the hallway toward Bucky’s room. Twelve hours have passed, but they won’t allow visitors until he’s stable. Maria flew in a couple of the doctors that oversaw Steve’s thaw from the arctic ice. They nodded to him in the hall but declined to talk about Bucky’s condition. 

“It’s weird Sam. It’s him, but—” Steve looks at his hands, brow furrowing, “I look at him and— I mean, I recognize him. But for a minute there, his face— I don’t know.” Steve yields to the swell of guilt in his stomach, “I guess I didn’t recognize— what I saw.”

Sam hums like Steve has told him Bucky didn’t used to wear his hair so long and says, “He’s been through a lot. People adapt when they have to.”

Steve rests his chin on his fist and breathes through a nauseous wave.

“Let’s see how he is when he comes to,” Sam says into his coffee cup. He swallows the rest in one gulp and drops it into a trashcan. “If I’m honest, Steve, I didn’t think I’d be spending so much time in hospitals with you.”

Steve huffs a sound like a laugh.

 

* * *

 

The nurse shows Steve how to feed him.

“Oh, thank you Ma’am, but we’ve, uh— done this before.”

She raises her eyebrows, “Oh.”

“I mean, it was always the other way around. I was the sick one and he was the one with the spoonful of mush. But I— think I remember how it goes.”

“Alright. Great. Just ring the bell if his condition changes.”

Steve stands by the couch until the nurse leaves. He walks to Bucky’s bedside and takes the chair that has been placed there for him.

“Hey Buck.”

Bucky doesn’t stir. He’s breathing on his own. The cuts on his face have been cleaned and patched. One of the nurses brushed his hair and splayed it out behind him on his pillow. Steve is about to speak again when Bucky opens his eyes. The right one immediately closes again and he squints the left to a slit. Bucky rolls his head toward Steve and locates his face. Bucky’s expression doesn’t change and he says nothing.

Steve clears his throat, “Do you want— some oatmeal?” He lifts the styrofoam bowl into Bucky’s view, tipping the top so he can see inside.

Bucky stares at the bowl. His right eye opens for a second and his brow creases. He blinks twice and whispers, “Yeah.” He sounds surprised.

Steve pulls his chair closer and scoops a small bite onto the spoon. He talks while he brings the spoon to Bucky’s mouth and waits for him to open it, “I told the nurse this is old hat for us. I think she might have— gotten the wrong idea.”

Bucky closes his lips around the spoon and when Steve pulls it away he can see the corner of Bucky’s lips drawn up in a smirk.

“I think the brunette is sweet on you. She put a whole lot of brown sugar in this.”

Bucky’s smile creeps up his face, “Get her number for me.”

“Get it yourself, you hound,” Steve holds out another bite and Bucky is quicker to open his mouth, “Am I your answering service and your date book, too?”

Bucky snorts. They used to do this during the war, trade old insults that didn’t really make sense anymore. It’s the rhythm that’s familiar. “Aw Steve, you’re more than that. You can be my coat rack when we’re at the dance hall, too.” 

“Ha ha,” Steve says through a crooked grin.

Bucky finishes the oatmeal and stays up cracking jokes for a while. Steve snaps them right back at him the way Bucky used to when Steve was the one propped up on pillows. 

Bucky doesn’t ask him to stay but Steve stays anyway. He pulls his chair to the wall so they can both see the TV. 

The nurses come and go and every once in a while a doctor stops in. Bucky talks to them in Romanian. His answers are crisp and short. 

Bucky keeps the TV on one of the few English-speaking channels. He says very little except to complain about the ads, “What is this? Coconut Vanilla Sundae? Why is all shampoo advertised like food now? I don’t want to eat shampoo.”

On the afternoon of the second day, Bucky lays on the bed with all his covers kicked off the end. He has on the dusty black pants he came in with and thick wool hospital socks. Steve steps out to get him dinner and comes back to find Bucky sitting cross-legged on the mattress with his boots on. He’s talking to a doctor with a scowl on his face. 

Bucky’s eyes flick to Steve when he appears in the doorway. The doctor turns to follow his gaze and catches him before he can retreat, “Ah, Captain Rogers.”

“Yes?”

“Could I have a word?”

“Of course.” Steve sets down Bucky’s tray on the table by the bed before following the doctor out into the hall.

“Your friend—”

“Sergeant Barnes.”

“Yes, of course. The Sergeant is recovering well. He is a very strong man; not unlike yourself.” The doctor pauses and Steve waits. “I have not been briefed on the exact nature of the Sergeant’s combat experience. But it is understandable that he is— wary of those who are trying to help him.”

Steve nods and says nothing.

“He will be released tomorrow. It will be critical to monitor him closely as I expect he will not necessarily ask for help when it is needed.” The doctor sighs, “You understand that I am speaking of both visible and invisible ailments?”

“Yes.” 

“Good.”

 

* * *

 

“We need a quiet place.”

“Well I’ve got a lot of safe houses state-side.”

“The doctors don’t want him traveling for more than a few hours.”

“Could you get to Athens? We have a condo there.”

“A condo?” 

“It’s secure.”

“Okay.”

“Is he cleared? I can have transport there in an hour.”

“That would be great. Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

The Athens safe house smells like sea air. Bucky heads straight for the balcony. He stands at the rail and watches birds circle the buildings cascading down the hillside. He comes inside for dinner, slides the plates into the dishwasher like he’s done it before, and heads back to the balcony.

When the sun goes down, Steve joins him.

“How are you feeling?”

“Good. Too good.”

Steve looks at him.

“It shouldn’t be this easy.”

“The withdrawal?”

Bucky nods, “It might come back. Or get worse, I don’t know. I’ve never made it this far.”

Steve looks out into the night. There are lights flickering in every building but the shore is strangely dark.

“Steve,” Steve’s heart sinks at the tone of Bucky’s voice, “Did you understand what I told you?”

“Yeah, Buck—”

“Stop, just—” Bucky holds up a hand, “Just listen to me. I know how it feels. Trust me; I have been told a lot of things I didn’t want to hear. Okay?”

Steve stares out at the dark.

“Erskine and Zola, you know they worked together?”

Steve says nothing.

“They were Eugenicists first. They wanted to make people better. That’s why that crackpot Schmidt recruited them. But they dreamed a lot bigger than selective breeding,” Bucky draws a long breath, “That takes generations. Erskine and Zola believed they could create the perfect man, the Übermensch, in a single generation—” Bucky turns to face Steve, “just by shaping a child.”

“Bucky—”

“I know you don’t want to hear it,” Bucky cuts him off harshly, “Just listen, Steve. You know all those vitamins you took as a kid? Well they weren’t vitamins. They stunted your growth. You weren’t small by nature. That’s why you got so huge after the serum. Look at me, look at Schmidt. We didn’t get 200% bigger. Your body just grew into what it wanted to be all along.” 

“Erskine said his serum—”

“They fed you chemicals so you’d be weak. Got you sick at every opportunity. They put blankets from the sick ward on your bed, they put pus from people’s sores in your food.”

Steve lunges to grab his shoulders, “ _Bucky_. Listen to yourself. _Listen_ to yourself. Do you realize how insane all this sounds? Why would they do that? It doesn’t make any sense."  

“It’s true,” Bucky’s voice is quiet, he’s shaking his head, “Think about it. Why would Erskine choose some skinny kid that lied on his enlistment form? He shaped you Steve. You were his creation. That’s why he trusted you with the serum.”

Steve is gripping him hard, narrow eyes, “Then why would he do it in America?”

“He didn’t want you growing up in the shadow of a regime. The kind of man he needed would have his own reasons for fighting.”

Steve stares at him. 

“He didn’t send the bullies. Zola paid the mob to take care of that.” Steve releases Bucky in a rush and turns his back, “They all knew your name because leaving you bloody and wheezing paid pretty damn well.”

Bucky walks up behind him and speaks over his shoulder, “Erskine wanted you to know death so well you wouldn’t flinch when it finally took you. Because the perfect man was still a tool at the end of the day.”

Steve spins and spits back, “So what were you? They chose you too? To become this?” Steve points as Bucky’s metal arm and immediately flinches at the gesture.

Bucky is silent for a minute, like he’s waiting for Steve to continue. He draws a breath and lets it out slowly, “Yeah, chosen. But not for this. Not at first. I was Zola’s idea.” 

Steve rubs a hand over his eyes, “Bucky, I’m sorry. Listen, this is all wrong—”

“They were worried you would actually die. Because even as a kid you were too noble.” Bucky gives him a look he doesn’t understand. “They scooped me up from the docks when I was seven, picking pockets and— worse. My dad was a drunk and my mom was dead. I was surviving,” Bucky pauses, then adds quietly, “I guess that’s what they were looking for.”

“They gave me a new family and a job: keep you alive and I’d stay alive too. But I could never let you find out,” Bucky looks up suddenly with sharp eyes, “what they were doing. That’s all I had to do. Keep you alive and keep you in the dark.”

“Bucky…” Bucky doesn’t cut him off, so Steve looks up, “I think Hydra— messed with your head.”

“Yeah, they sure did.”

“I mean, they told you all this—”

“It’s true, Steve.”

“I’m sure it feels that way.”

“Why do you think you know better than me?”

“Because I’m not the one who spent years— because I didn’t just spend three days in the hospital coming off a highly addictive drug cocktail.”

“You’re right, my three days outweigh the dozens—hundreds?—you spent in the hospital as a kid. My three days of sickness mean I’m crazy.”

“Bucky—”

“No. You realize how insulting that is? What the fuck am I doing here if Hydra’s pulling me around by the puppet strings? Why would they want me to show up like a raving lunatic?”

Steve stares. Bucky’s eyes are black and angry. 

“Yeah I know how it looks. I know how it sounds. But I don’t give a shit Steve. I used my last hour to tell you the truth because for all the fucked up shit I’ve done, I owed you that. I’ve never made it through withdrawal. Don’t you think I’ve tried?” Bucky snarls and beats two sharp hands against his chest, “I’ve never gotten this far and I’m sure it’s not the end. So if I have another minute to live, I’ll spend it telling you the truth.”

Steve is silent.

“This is the clearest my head has been in years. All I want to do is help you.”

Steve waits to see if Bucky has more to say. When he turns his frosty silence to the dark night sky, Steve speaks, “I appreciate that. But, between the two of us, I think I’ve got a lot fewer problems right now.” Steve pauses, biting the inside of his lip, “Would you let me help you?”

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

* * *

  
_If the asset is incapacitated, he will retreat and tend to his wounds. He will treat the wounds of his teammates—or seek their assistance with his own, as the case may be—before pursuing outside medical assistance. The asset will prioritize the safety of the group and the preservation of its cover in pursuing such assistance._   


* * *

 

“I asked Erskine that myself.” Steve braces his arms against the sink.

“I bet he didn’t lie.”

Steve looks up.

“He was good like that. Tell me what he said.”

The tension in the room is palpable. Sam is looking down at his hands again. Bucky is leaning back against the kitchen wall, two legs of his chair off the floor. There’s an untouched glass of orange juice on the table in front of him. Steve exhales and tries to breathe out the frustration.

“I bet he said it was because you were good. I bet he used his favorite line. Some shit about ‘a weak man knows the value of strength… and compassion.’” Steve feels his the heat creep up his neck, curl around the backs of his ears. “That’s true, that’s all true.” Bucky’s eyes are sharp on his face, “He just left out a few details. How he picked you from your crib. How he was the one who made you weak.”

Steve turns and leaves the room. He walks as far away as he can, up the stairs and into the master bathroom. He leaves the door open and sits on the tub edge. Steve stares at the bathmat and minutes pass. He rolls his shoulders.

He tenses at the sound of feet on the carpeted stairs and exhales when it’s Sam that rounds the corner. Feels like relief but his heart is sinking. Sam leans against the bathroom door frame and says nothing. Steve searches his face and finds no pity there.

“What am I supposed to say?”

“How should I know?” Sam shrugs. 

“He knows a lot.”

“Hydra knew a lot.”

“He knows more than he should. Than he would. He never met Erskine. How would he—” Steve lifts a hand through the air, shoulders rising. Sam waits but Steve can’t finish the thought. “He needs help.”

“So, I don’t mean to be blunt, but if he needs help, what are we doing alone in a condo in Athens?”

Steve sighs at the bathmat.

“Not that there aren’t great doctors in Greece too, but we sure aren’t talking to any of them. So I’m just wondering what you’re hoping for out here.”

“I remember what it was like,” Steve looks up without lifting his head, “To wake up. And no one knows the world you know.”

Sam says nothing.

“I think it’s worse for him. Because he’s not confused. Because everything makes sense in his head. He’s so sure.” Steve presses his palms to his eyes, “I just don’t want to throw him in front of a bunch of doctors that will treat him like—”

Steve hears Sam push off the doorway, “You don’t have to throw him anywhere.”

 

* * *

 

The museums are quicker than Steve expected. He has huge scan files transferring over a government VPN that afternoon and a stiff envelope of originals delivered by secure courier first thing in the morning.

Steve stays in his bedroom, sorting and organizing, until noon. He comes downstairs to find Sam sitting on the balcony with his feet propped up on the rail.

“Hey, where’s Bucky?”

“In the shower.”

“Oh, okay. Has he been in there long?”

“Uh,” Sam checks the time on his phone, “Yeah, almost an hour.”

Steve’s head snaps, “An hour?”

Sam drops his feet off the balcony railing.

“Should we— do you think he’s okay?”

“Yeah I don’t usually get worried until the second hour of showering, but—”

Steve walks back inside and heads straight for the guest bathroom. He pauses outside the door, the sound of running water filtering through the cracks, and raises his fist to knock. Bucky beats him to it, a muffled voice echoing off the tile, “I’m fine.”

Steve lowers his fist. He tries to think of something to say for too long and eventually walks away. He sits on the couch until Bucky emerges. He’s wearing a black shirt and jeans that look like they probably belong to Sam. His hair is wet and dripping, darkening the fabric over his shoulders. He takes a seat across from Steve like he’s been asked to sit.

Steve leans forward immediately and sets the folder on the table. He pauses to reel in his enthusiasm. “So I had some things sent over. I thought they might jog your memory." 

Bucky doesn’t blink and doesn’t move. He watches Steve pull the first photograph from the pile. Steve slides it across the table. Mrs. Barnes added names to the bottom margin in a fine script at some point. Steve never saw the names until he saw the photograph out of its frame.

Bucky speaks, his voice cold, “I remember their names.”

“You look just like them,” Steve says, too quietly.

Bucky stares at him. Steve meets his eyes and drops them, waiting for the collision.

“Is that what you want? You want to trade punches, Steve?”

“No, Buck, I—”

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know.” Bucky grabs the photograph, too roughly for such old paper, and jabs his finger at his father’s face, “Government.” He points to his mother, “Government.” He points to his oldest brother, “Military.” He drops the photo on the table, “The rest were orphans. They made good money, taking us in.”

Steve bites his upper lip.

“They didn’t matter to me, though,” Bucky sits back in his chair, “You were my meal ticket. If you went away they’d go away too and I’d be back on the street if I was lucky, or in the gutter if I wasn’t. I lived on the streets for two years before they found me; that was hell, Steve. My world revolved around you." 

Steve looks at his face.

Bucky looks angry but the way his eyebrows knit up says something else. “Why do you think I was so angry when you got too sick?” Bucky shakes his head, “Because I’m selfish. Is that what you want to hear?”

“No,” Steve responds immediately, truthfully.

“I’ll tell you everything. I will tell you everything,” he enunciates the words like Steve can’t hear him properly, “You want me to tell you about all the times I pushed you? They wanted you to be soft on your mother but not a momma’s boy. No father to push you around so it fell to me to set your temper off. They kept threatening until I found a way—”

“Bucky, you never—”

“Yes I did. All those times I made you wear a coat. Made you feel weak. And when I wouldn’t let you finish the fights you could have finished? Every time I tried to talk you out of standing up for yourself.” Bucky’s speaking quickly now, “They wanted me to bloody your lip but I wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t have worked anyway. I knew better than them. Best way to wound your pride was to treat you like glass. To baby you.”

“Don’t talk about yourself like that. I know I wasn’t as grateful as I—”

Bucky cuts him off, “They wanted you sparking for a fight. And you were. Can’t argue that. At least I didn’t hit you,” Bucky strokes two knuckles along his chin, his eyes have calmed, “I think that would have been worse. You needed a friend.” Bucky drops his eyes to his hands in a rush, “Well— not a friend. An ally.”

“Bucky,” Steve reaches for him, but sets his hand on the table instead, “Bucky you were my friend. You still are. You will always be my friend.”

Bucky won’t lift his eyes from his hands.

 

* * *

 

Steve tries the photographs again after dinner. This time he starts with a school picture of their class in the fifth grade.

Bucky puts the edge of his thumbnail against Steve’s barely visible forearm in the photo, “That bandage. You remember it?”

Steve squints down at the picture. There’s a lighter patch about halfway up his arm, “Vaguely.”

“You remember how you got it?”

“No.”

“I found you behind the grocer, pushed up against the wall, bleeding all over the place.”

Steve squints down at the picture.

“You said there was a kid with a shard of glass but he was long gone by the time I got there. Your shirt sleeve was soaked through and you were gripping the gash,” Bucky wraps his fingers around his metal forearm, “like you could stop the bleeding with your hand.”

Steve keeps his eyes on Bucky’s hand.

“I stripped off my shirt and tied it around your arm. I was pressing down so hard I thought I’d break the bone. And you spent the night at my house, both of us kneeling behind the dresser, trying to clean the cut and get a bandage on it that the blood didn’t soak right through.”

Steve tucks the photograph back into his folder.

Bucky’s voice has softened when he says, “Who grows up like that Steve?” He lets the question hang, “I’ve seen a lot of kids in dark places. The only ones who know how to stop the bleeding are the ones in war zones.” 

Steve stands up and Bucky holds him in place with his voice, “You know what I realized? That Zola was testing me too. I think they knew what I would become.” There are dark creases under Bucky’s eyes, “I think they were planning on it.”

“Bucky,” Steve looks down at his face, “I just want to talk about you. You here and now. Your body. Your mind. Your arm. How you feel. Anything. Anything at all,” Steve shrugs the tension out of his shoulders, “Why can’t we talk about you?”

“You don’t want that,” Bucky holds his gaze, “You don’t want to talk about my mind. You know what’s in there?” Bucky stands. The space between their chairs is too tight and Bucky is so close that Steve’s whole body tenses. “They showed me a picture of you. When they first gave me the job. You were staring right at the camera, just six years old. I can still see it.” Bucky gestures at his head, “Perfect recall. The face of survival. That’s what you were. A mission first. Before everything.”

“Can’t I just be glad to have you back?” Steve drops his voice to a murmur.

Bucky blinks. His jaw flexes and he says, voice low, “Then put those photos away.”

 

* * *

 

Steve finds Bucky in the living room at midnight. Bucky slept very little in the hospital and he’s sleeping even less in Athens. He’s reading the phone book they found tucked under the kitchen sink page-by-page. Steve sits down at the far end of the couch. He left the folder on the desk in his room.

“Can I ask what you remember, after you fell from the train?”

Bucky closes the phone book, “Sure.” His voice is neutral.

“We don’t have to if you don’t—”

“Ask.”

“Okay. What’s the first thing you remember?”

Bucky looks at the wall, “I don’t think you want to hear about that.”

“Do you remember your missions?" 

“Yes.”

“Did they— did you remember who you were before, when you were on a mission?”

Bucky turns to look at him, he sighs instead of answering.

“I guess it’s hard to know what you don’t know…” Steve starts.

“I needed my memory to do my job.”

Steve’s heart shrinks.

“They told me to forget you, so I did.”

Steve breathes out and out. 

“I forgot me too.”

Steve forgets to breathe in.

“You were dead, Steve.”

“So why—” Steve inhales, “Why would you remember now? Why would they let you remember all this? If these are really memories and not something they planted—”

“Why would they let me? It’s not like that. They could never take the truth away. They just blurred it enough that I didn’t ask questions. I could always feel clarity just around the corner when the drugs started to wear off.”

Bucky waits a beat before adding, “I did what I was asked to do, but they didn’t have perfect control. They never did. Look at you. They didn’t want you to turn out like this.”

 

* * *

 

Steve brings out his birth certificate at breakfast. It lists both his parents’ names. He sets it on the table with no explanation. Sam looks up sharply and Bucky barely reacts. Steve spoons yogurt into bowls and sets them on the table. He sees Bucky pick up the paper out of the corner of his eye.

He sets a bowl down in front of Bucky and Bucky moves to hand the certificate back to him. 

“They picked a baby born on the fourth of July.”

Steve takes the paper back.

Bucky watches him, “How sick is that, Steve?”

 

* * *

 

Bucky heads back to his bedroom. He never quite closes the door and Steve finds reasons to walk up and down the hall, catching glimpses of him sitting on his bed with his head in his hands. From what Steve can hear, about half of the meals he eats stay down. Sitting very still and quiet seems to help him.

Steve pulls up a list of foods on his phone, everything Bucky has been able to keep down, and adds ‘yogurt’ to the bottom. He pulls a bottle of glass cleaner from the hall closet and heads back toward the stairs. When he passes Bucky’s door, his bed is empty.

The door is still nearly shut and Steve would have heard him if he left the room. The hairs on the back of Steve’s neck stand up in a rush. He pushes open Bucky’s door, sharp eyes sweeping left to right.

The window is open. Steve runs forward and leans out. Bucky’s at the edge of the slanting roof with a man in black on his back. Steve’s out the window before he understands what’s happening. He lands on his back, feet toward the edge of the roof, and catches himself with his heels in the gutter. 

Bucky is trying to shake the man off his back and off the roof but he has an arm locked around Bucky’s neck. Bucky’s slashing with a short knife but the man is well-armored. Steve grabs Bucky’s ankle and pulls up hard. The sudden movement loosens the man’s hold and Bucky jerks fiercely to free himself.

Steve sees the syringe before Bucky does. They’re difficult weapons to defend against. If the solution is right, they only need a prick to get the job done. Steve freezes. He’s too far away to reach the needle and any sudden movements might things worse. Bucky’s metal hand flies up to circle his own neck just as the man stabs for Bucky’s skin. The needle catches between the plates and Bucky yanks his hand away, snapping it in cleanly off the syringe.

The man pulls back and stabs again, this time at Bucky’s mouth. His face contorts with a jerk and he covers his mouth with his left hand while throwing a sharp elbow back with his right. Clear liquid spurts from the syringe. 

Steve pulls up so sharply that Bucky and the man are airborne. Hovering at the top of the parabola just long enough for Steve to grab the man’s throat. He jerks to the left as Bucky falls free of the man’s arms.

It happens fast, Steve both knows what he’s doing and doesn’t. One hand on the man’s throat, one on his jaw. Steve rips his hands in opposite directions and breaks his neck with a crack. 

The body goes limp. Steve leaves it on the roof.

Steve climbs back through the window to find the room empty. The sound of running water leads him to the hallway bathroom. Bucky is splashing water on his face.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I think so. I don’t know if it—” The doctors said that skin contact would probably be enough for a relapse. Steve nods his head.

“How long does it take?”

“Not long. A couple of minutes.”

“Do you want me to wait with you?”

Bucky stares at the sink, the water running down the drain. He rests his forearms on the edge and his flesh hand shakes over the bowl. “Yeah.”

Steve sits down on the bathmat just as Sam appears in the doorway, wide-eyed and a little breathless, “I thought I heard—”

“Yeah we had a visitor,” Steve answers.

Sam’s eyes take in Bucky at the sink, still splashing water over his face.

“Did, uh—”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Okay.” Sam nods. He looks back at Steve, pauses, and takes a seat next to him on the bathmat.

They sit in relative silence. Just the irregular sound of Bucky’s watery hands splashing his face drifting over the counter edge and down to Steve’s ears. Steve keeps an eye on his watch. 

After ten minutes, Steve looks over at Sam. His head is tipped back against the bathroom wall and his eyes are closed. After fifteen minutes, Steve says, “Alright Buck, that’s fifteen minutes.”

Bucky stops splashing water and shuts off the faucet. Steve tugs a towel off the rack next to his head and throws it onto the counter. Bucky shakes it loose and presses it to his face. He keeps his elbows on the counter.

Sam stands and leaves the room without a word. Steve hesitates. Hesitation becomes waiting becomes staying. A minute passes. Bucky drops the towel and heads straight for the toilet. He drops to his knees and vomits immediately. Bucky pulls his hair back from his face with a wet hand and spits. He vomits again.

Steve stands, walks to the door, and turns back, trying for light, “Do you think that was the yogurt or the fighting? I’m trying to keep a list for your sensitive stomach.”

Bucky snorts. The sound echoes strangely in the toilet bowl. A short pause and he laughs. The kind of gentle chuckle that takes Steve straight back to Brooklyn. “I think it was the yogurt.” There’s a rib in his voice.

“I’ll take it off the list then.” Steve lets him hear the false nonchalance in his voice.

“Thanks bud.”

Steve walks into the hall and texts Maria that they need some clean-up help and a new place to stay.

 

* * *

 

Steve and Sam pack their bags while Bucky lays on his bed and stares at the ceiling.

Maria sends a car that will take them to a boat. The next safe house is in Naples. (“I can’t fly you.” “That’s fine.” “It’s a really long trip.” “We’ll take breaks. We can’t stay here.”) By the time they’ve packed everything into the plain white van, the man on the roof has disappeared into another plain white van. Steve loads up the last row of seats with blankets and pillows.

“Jesus Steve, I’m not going into labor. I can sit up in the car.”

“Yeah I know. You’ve got the whole back seat anyway. Might as well get comfortable.”

Bucky climbs through the door, grumbling, “Gonna suffocate on all these goddamn pillows.”

The drive is long and silent. The driver is armed and doesn’t introduce herself. She stops when they ask her to.

They board an unmarked boat at a private dock. Bucky carries all of his pillows and blankets in his arms. He ducks into the passenger cabin and throws them over the floor. He tumbles to the floor in a somersault and rolls across the cushioned heap.

Sam laughs. He drops his bag at Steve’s feet and jumps into it like a pile of leaves. He starts spreading his arms and legs like he’s making a snow angel and Steve laughs in spite of himself. Bucky grabs one end of a blanket and rolls across the pile, curling it into a cocoon around him. Sam starts pushing pillows out of the way and lining up blankets for Bucky to roll across and wrap around himself. 

Steve sits down awkwardly at the edge of the bench that wraps around the cabin and watches. His face settles into a familiar, masking smile.

When Bucky is wrapped up in all four blankets, he sits up, looking like a fat caterpillar. Sam laughs loudly, throwing his head back. Bucky grins back at him. He struggles to his feet and shuffles over the bench. Sam follows him, packing in pillows on either side of his body.

When the captain pokes his head in to announce their departure, Steve can hear Sam and Bucky snickering quietly at the look on his face. He nods his thanks at the captain with a straight face.

When the boat picks up speed, Sam pushes open the slanted window closest to Bucky’s head, “Here, how about some sea air?”

Bucky sits still, comically neutral face as the wind blisters in through the opening, tangling his hair and flinging ocean spray into the cabin. A big splash of water flies through the gap and lands across Bucky’s face and shoulders. “Wow, yeah,” he blinks the saltwater out of his eyes, “Feels great. Thanks.” Sam is biting his knuckles to stop himself from laughing. Bucky’s lips are threatening to curve up into a grin. He keeps his arms tucked into his blanket cocoon.

“Just looking out for you man.” Sam leans across to shut the window and pats Bucky hard on the shoulder. 

The sun sets about an hour after the boat leaves the shore. Steve eventually settles closer to Bucky, who’s still wrapped up in blankets. They have the cabin lights up and Sam is laying on his side, reading a book.

Steve pulls a carefully folded paper from his back pocket and smooths it over his knee.

“Remember this?”

Two scripts, one neat and one that loops above and below the lines. A written conversation. A negotiation.

Bucky looks and looks away without reading it, “Yeah.”

“Were you serious?”

“Yeah I was.”

Steve looks down at the note. They wrote it under the table at a Barnes family dinner. Passing it back and forth, reading quickly when Bucky’s parents were looking elsewhere, and writing blind with their free hands busily shuffling potatoes onto their forks.

Steve picks through Bucky’s neat handwriting asking him in blunt sentences to run away with him. Hitch a train to Chicago and never come back. Steve’s loopy handwriting poking fun, playing along, and finally asking, _What happened? Are you okay?_

It’s the last line on the page. Bucky had just handed it back and shook his head. 

“You remember how cross my old man was?”

“Yeah. I can’t remember why though.”

“I think I told you it was because I was taking cans from the cupboard and selling them for pocket money.”

Steve turns to look at Bucky’s profile. Bucky says nothing for a while. The corners of his mouth are pulled down.

“Those were quiet years. Zola and Erskine were busy in Germany. They left us alone for so long I thought we might be free.”

Bucky turns and holds Steve’s eyes, “June of ’39 through December of ’41. Best years of our lives, I think.”

“My mother died in June of ’41.”

“I remember.”

Steve looks at Bucky’s face. He tries to focus on the things that haven’t changed.

“But if we’d run you never would’ve gotten the serum. You never would have had any of this.”

Steve forces himself to look at Bucky’s eyes. They’re different. It makes his stomach twist.

“If you knew what was coming back then, would you have done it? Would you have given up all this for a different life?”

“I would have done anything to save you from this.”

Bucky nods, more to himself than Steve, “I think we could have done it. We could have un-chosen ourselves.”

Steve stands. He pulls his bag from under the bench and rummages through it until he finds the dented box of instant oatmeal.

 

* * *

 

Bucky’s blanket wrap has become a lumpy nest by the time the sun rises. He gathers it in his arms and dumps it on top of a still sleeping Sam. 

Sam makes a muffled sound from under the heap and stretches out on the bench. His arms reach above the covers and curl around. He pulls the top blanket down and under his chin, makes a content sound and mumbles, “So warm.”

“Let me help you with that,” Bucky says as he leans over and starts tucking in the mess of fleece around Sam’s body with somewhat vicious movements. He jabs Sam in the stomach, “oh sorry, sorry,” and Sam yelps and jerks. Bucky tucks in again and jabs Sam in the ribs, “whoops, sorry,” Sam makes a pained sound that dissolves into a pained laugh. “Just trying to tuck— this— in—” Bucky shoves the blankets tighter after every word, “really— good—”

“Yeah I think you got it,” Sam’s voice cuts over his. Sharp but playful. Steve is standing far enough away that he doesn’t stop himself from watching them. He pours boiling water over the oatmeal in three disposable cups.

“Let me just—” Bucky wrestles both ends of the seatbelt that’s built into the bench around Sam’s waist, “Here we go,” he buckles the belt around Sam, “And let’s just—” Bucky finds two more belts, one around Sam’s ankles and one around his shoulders, “There.”

“Thanks man.”

“You are welcome.” Bucky brushes his hands together like he’s pleased with his work.

Steve walks over with oatmeal. He sets Sam’s on the bench over his head and watches him wrestle an arm free. Sam reaches an arm over his head, scoops a precarious spoonful, and carefully brings it back to his mouth. He’s less careful with the second scoop and Bucky snickers when half of it lands on his cheek. Sam pushes it into his mouth with the spoon, leaving behind a slimy trail, and Bucky laughs harder.

They go through twelve packets of oatmeal before everyone feels full. Sam announces he never wants oatmeal again.

Bucky stands to toss his cup into the trash and crouches to dig into his bag. Steve bought it for him in Romania, to hold everything he used to have strapped to his body. He pulls out a small metal box.

Bucky holds it for a second before shoving his bag back under the bench and walking over to an open spot between Steve and Sam. He sits down before saying, “This is from the lab.”

“In Romania?”

“Yeah.”

Sam lifts his head but doesn’t struggle out of the seatbelts around his body.

“Part of my— training. Emergency procedure. Get the box. Pick the lock. Burn the contents.”

Silence steps in. Steve watches Bucky’s face and fumbles for words, “Did you?”

Bucky looks up, “Well I got it out,” he looks back the box, “and picked the lock.” He flips open the lid. He lifts a small stack of folded papers and turns them over in his hands. After a minute he hands the stack to Steve.

Steve takes it. He recognizes the handwriting on the outside of the first folded paper. It belongs to Erskine. His stomach hits the deck of the boat and keeps going, straight out the bottom into the freezing ocean. Steve stares at the paper in his hands.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

* * *

  
 _The asset shares intelligence but withholds analysis. He will interpret information independently and form a set of objectives, separate from the group’s plan of action, which he will only share with teammates if mission beneficial._  
 

* * *

 

Three letters. All in English. The folded creases are weak, like they’ve been opened and closed over and over. 

“I think they used these boxes for internal mail,” Bucky says and to Steve’s ears he sounds like he’s underwater, “Zola liked to keep things on paper.” 

Steve lifts the first letter and his eyes begin to slide over the words, uninvited. 

_June 17th, 1943_

_Dr. Vãduva,_

_I trust you have been well._

_I understand that our colleague, Dr. Zola, is seeking professional allies for Hydra. He happened to mention your involvement while attempting to solicit mine. I must say I was surprised to hear your name and would not be surprised to learn that the entire assertion was fabricated._

_However, my conscience compels me to write to you. Though I believe it highly unlikely, your alliance with Hydra, or indeed your work in the service of their interests, would be a grave development for our field. Please know this is not a political plea. You and I both have been personally wounded by this war in ways that no peace treaty or ideological compromise will heal. I am done fighting other men’s battles. My allegiance is to the advancement of mankind before any individual and far, far ahead of any commitment to a nation or collective._

_Though I may be spending this violent season in the service of the United States Military, it is only because this isolated nation provides the best environment for my work. Though they are narrow-minded about its application, I see less to fear in their intentions than in the intentions of my countrymen. This line of thought returns me to the unease that drove me to compose this letter._

_I cannot begrudge Dr. Zola his brilliance. He has advanced our understanding of the human body, of its physical and psychological limits, leaps and bounds beyond any work that came before. However, after working closely with him for some time, I realized that the vectors of our aspirations were not, in fact, aligned. The further we progressed, the more pronounced these differences became. I began to see that every hope I had of cultivating the human soul to strength sat in direct opposition of his vision to crush man to his basic elements and reconstruct him in the shape of something decidedly less vulnerable and undeniably less human._

_I have been following the developments in Romania with great concern. If it is assurances of safety or funding that have swayed you, then give me the opportunity to secure a matching offer in the United States. I assure you that doors will open for men of science seeking asylum._

_If it is his vision that has convinced you, let me say only this: Can man truly know his own weaknesses? Even if a man could be built from the ground up, is there any carpenter alive who has the clarity of vision to architect such a complex structure? If it is arrogance that guides his hands instead of clarity, no divine guidance will deliver a man from his ill-bought clay. Though you may think you have seen the worst of this war in Nazi bloodlust, please weigh the words of a man who found himself at hell’s doorstep not so long ago: there are far greater horrors lurking._

_Please think carefully where you employ your hammer and chisel. You may not see the true nature of your creation until it is much too late. I look forward to your reply._

_Wishing you safe shelter until the storm blows over,_

_Dr. Abraham Erskine_

Steve lowers the pages, eyes lingering on Erskine’s signature. He looks up at Bucky and over at Sam, both of whom are watching him expectantly. He hands Bucky the first letter silently and picks up the second.

_September 9th, 1946_

_Dr. Vãduva,_

_It was over three years ago that I wrote to you with hearty congratulations and open arms to welcome you into the Hydra brotherhood. I know it has been a challenging few years for us all. War truly leaves no man untouched. Thus, I felt the time was right for a new beginning, for today I am pleased to announced Hydra’s rebirth._

_Our dear leader, Johann Schmidt, was taken from us savagely, leaving our party directionless for the past year. You have held firm to our governing principles during this period of silence and I am pleased to reward your patience. Let this be Hydra’s legacy: no political upheaval, no petty shuffling for power, will shake us loose from our single-minded devotion to our work. When our well-moneyed but weak-minded patrons inevitably fall, do not fear. We will not struggle to secure new patronage, as power will always pay for intelligence. This timeless truth has proved itself again as I have secured residence, facilities, and staff in service of the United States of America._

_I will detail the specifics of our new arrangement in time, but let me first take this occasion to remember our past and pave a vision for a smoother future. Nearly a decade ago, Dr. Schmidt had the foresight to gather the first scientists—a diverse group of Physicists, Engineers, Chemists, Biologists, Geneticists, even a select few innovators in the burgeoning fields of Psychiatry and Psychology—and found Hydra as a safe haven for scientific progress. We were brought together during a time of great promise and great change, poised to ascend beyond the limits of mankind’s own ingenuity and harness the power of the gods who came before us._

_However, man is imperfect, as we all know too well. Greed forced our hands and we grew like an unchecked virus, spawning a connected network of factories. Our vision was grand but our production outpaced our true abilities. We did not have the resources to defend a nation, as that is indeed what we were building. I see now that Hydra does not need an army. This horde of minions is merely a drain, something to which we must attend like a house pet. Furthermore, though man may crave power, men of science must rise above base human desires and recognize that centralization is the greatest threat to our work._

_This is not a deviation from our principles but a wiser interpretation. As before, where one head has been cut off, two will grow in its place, but now each head will not recognize his brother. Brethren, with the clarity of hindsight, I see now that Hydra’s best form is as a parasite. Each of us will establish independent labs, far flung to the corners of the earth. I will take care to build a circulatory system to fund and protect each of you and in turn, I will call on you when our safety or advancement requires your work. Though I will build my lab in the very brain of this host animal, a newly formed secret entity called SHIELD, I do not consider myself a leader in the model of Dr. Schmidt. Though his goals were admirable, his political visibility was ultimately an untenable threat to Hydra._

_Though the Americans are blinded by their thirst for atomic power, they are clever architects. There are many layers of insulation between SHIELD and the chaotic political landscape and further protective screens between their already bloated bureaucracy and our network. It will not be a struggle to bleed this creature dry with so many layers of gauze over its eyes. Even as these simpletons turn their attention to building weapon repositories, we will grow stronger in the dark, preparing for the day when men embrace order and rally around science to lift them to a higher calling than slaughtering each other._

_I call on you now to scatter and rebuild. Prepare your labs for immediate relocation. I will arrange for armed protection and secure funding for your new facilities. Please send word if you do not receive further correspondence from me within the month._

_Until we have the fortune of meeting again, rejoice at the resilience of our creation and forever, Heil Hydra._

_Respectfully,_

_Dr. Arnim Zola_

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees Bucky hand the first letter to Sam. He sits up and pulls his arms free of the blankets to take it. Steve stares down at the last page. He can feel the rock of the sea through the seat but not through his boots. Like he’s floating over the water, displaced by an equal ocean of air resting above it, an invisible force.

Steve hands the second letter to Bucky without meeting his eyes. He unfolds the last set of papers with a weight pulling his sternum down like an anchor.

_December 2nd, 1973_

_Dr. Vãduva,_

_I will be direct about my intentions and brief with my argument. I understand that you wish to leave Hydra. If this decision came about due to the passing of Dr. Zola, let me assure you that his intelligence lives on. Even now I have taken over some logistical responsibilities, but it is Dr. Zola who leads us and who will always lead us._

_I’m sure I do not need to remind you of how Hydra has benefitted you and your work over the years. Nor do I need to detail the many occasions when Dr. Zola deftly moved the screens to keep us in the shadows. Surely there is no other collective that offers a better environment for men dedicated to the improvement of mankind above all else._

_Furthermore, Hydra continues to rise at an accelerating pace. We are on the eve of announcing a new initiative, one that will put a number on every man who walks the earth and divide the world into those who can support progress and those who will only disrupt it. We have acquired the services of a number of brilliant computer engineers to begin work on this program. The preservation of Dr. Zola’s genius illustrates only a fraction of this new technology’s promise._

_Has Hydra not given you with a worthy home?We have provided impeccable protection, even when you refused to relocate your facilities during the re-organization. Have we not shielded you from the increasingly volatile conditions in your resident country?_

_I’m sure I need not remind you of the advantages of invisibility, but perhaps it bears repeating. The application of our work is necessarily, unfortunately political, as any practical aspiration to shape mankind must be. Hydra is politically evergreen because it proclaims no allegiance. Our power comes from delivering results, supplying the tools of change when frightened governments are desperate for them. It buys us peace, but that is small compensation compared to the joy of seeing one’s creation walk the earth, don’t you think?_

_The men of Hydra need not fear the corrupting revision of history books for our names will never appear in print. We make ourselves known only to those who need to see us, and even then we emerge with a carefully painted portrait. We tell our audiences the stories they need to hear. Hydra is, at its core, a scientific brotherhood, but we have learned to shape shift, swelling to a military power when the world was crawling with them, shrinking to a seemingly harmless spore growing under the floorboards, and now establishing ourselves as a source of applied science, of weapons that fortify the men who wield them or do away with the soldier altogether._

_Leave Hydra and I promise you, history will not be kind. Think of your legacy. Is it not better to let your work stand alone than pollute its achievements with your fingerprints? The improvement of the human condition will always be championed. Dr. Vãduva, stay with Hydra and lend your brilliance to our cause._

_With great admiration,_

_Dr. Toveli Gohl_

Steve leaves the letter on the bench next to Bucky’s leg. He stares out the window while the other two finish reading. The land is closer than he expected. The sun glints off the waves, bright flashes that promise warmth later in the day.

Sam finishes the third letter, looks up, and says, “I guess he stayed with Hydra.”

“He didn’t,” Bucky’s hands are in his lap.

“How do you know?” Steve asks.

“I killed him.”

Steve tries to nod, but his chin drops once and his eyes fall to the floor instead.

“A month or so after this letter. He was on the run and hiding out in Saudi Arabia. They gave his lab to a British guy. He didn’t last long.” Bucky is speaking straight ahead, to the cabin, “Then it was a group of five young guys, which became three young guys.”

“What happened to them?”

“They’re still running it, as far as I know. Or, were running it.”

“Why did they send you to Romania?”

Bucky turns to look at Steve, his eyes sharp, lip curling, “They didn’t send me anywhere.”

Steve opens his mouth to respond and jumps to close it when the cabin door opens and the captain appears in the gap, “We’ve docked, gentlemen.”

“Oh,” Steve stands quickly and reaches for his bag under the bench. Sam and Bucky start gathering their things, slinging bags over their shoulders and bunching pillows under their arms.

Another plain white van, another long drive. Steve sits next to Sam and Bucky spreads out in the last row of seats. He keeps a pillow over his head so Steve can’t tell if he’s actually asleep. The letters are back in the metal box and back in Bucky’s bag. Steve looks at the back of the driver’s head so often he accidentally memorizes the shape of his outer ear. No one speaks.

The safe house is on the edge of the city. It’s old and well-cared for. All the interior walls are white and the exterior walls are covered in vines from the garden. It’s fully furnished, complete with two cars in a conspicuously contemporary garage.

Sam and Bucky wander off to claim rooms and Steve waits in the living room. He sits down, looks around, then stands and lifts the potted fern in the center of the coffee table and takes it over to the kitchen table. Steve sits down again. He considers taking his shoes off and thinks better of it.

Eventually, Bucky comes back into the main room. He sits down across from Steve and waits, elbows resting on his knees.

Steve isn’t sure how to begin again, he tries for direct, “So what were you doing in Romania?” but it comes out brisk.

“Looking for something.”

“Would have been easier to find me in D.C.”

Bucky furrows his brow, pulling his head back with an incredulous look, “Yeah, you’re right. Guess I fucked that up.”

Steve considers apologizing and decides not to. He waits for Bucky to speak again.

“I reported back to base after I dragged you out of the water. It was gutted. Sloppy job too, like it wasn’t shut down cleanly. Like it had been looted. I found a couple of vials of the solution—”

“The drugs?”

“Yes,” Bucky’s upper lip curls like he’s disgusted, eyes never moving from Steve’s face, “Enough for a week. I made it last for two.” Bucky drops his eyes, “I had some things to take care of.” Steve is about to ask him another question that will earn him a sneer when Bucky continues, “I thought that was it, Steve. No dose and I’m dead. I could’ve begged to come back. I know they were expecting me.” Bucky looks up, over Steve’s shoulder, “But the leash around my neck is my own will to live. Cut that off and I’m free.”

“So I figured I find you, tell you the truth, and just lay down. I stopped in Romania to look for more vials. Shouldn’t have gone in when I saw it was deserted. But I didn’t have the strength to get to the next base. Then the first charge went off,” Bucky shrugs, hands lifting, “I was too weak, couldn’t see shit. I was going to die.” He looks right at Steve, “So I just threw in the towel and sat down. At least it was my call.”

Bucky clears his throat. Steve can’t think of anything to say.

“Then you came down through the hole in the sky like a goddamn avenging angel. It wasn’t until I saw you that I realized—” Bucky swallows, “I think the addiction— They’ve made me believe— I think I’m stronger than they think. I could kill myself just by expecting to die.” Bucky’s voice is accelerating, squeezing out the gaps between words, “I think my mind’s the weakest part of this body. You ever think about that?” He looks up at Steve and his eyes have shed their shadows, “You’re still human under all that,” Bucky gestures at him, “You ever think about your weaknesses?”

“Yeah.” Steve’s stomach is drawn in on itself so tightly he’s holding his breath.

“Me too.”

“Why did you shoot me,” Steve’s voice looses its nerve halfway and he hardens himself around the words. It comes out sounding like a statement.

“I was trying to kill you.”

“You weren’t.”

Bucky stares at him.

“Was there anything else in the box?”

“No.”

“Why did you wait so long to show it to me?”

Bucky laughs harshly. He stands up abruptly and spits, “Guess I was waiting to see if I’d live. You would have gone through my bag after I died anyway.”

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve recoils.

“Don’t.” Steve stays seated and Bucky talks down to him, “Let’s be honest with each other, okay? There was nothing else in the box.” Bucky walks away and pads up the stairs.

 

* * *

 

Steve calls Maria long after the sun goes down. He uses a slim wand with a slit in the center to scan the letters. She promises to try handwriting analysis.

“The last letter is from a Dr. Gohl who seemed to be something like a leader at the time. Does that name bring anything up?”

Maria is silent for a moment, “No.”

“What do you know about this network of scientists?”

Maria sighs, “This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“Why didn’t this leak with the rest of the files?”

“I’m guessing from the letters that Zola ran the whole operation on paper.”

“But he’s talking about huge sums of money. Does SHIELD not have a bookkeeper?”

Maria doesn’t dignify the question with a response. Instead, she says, “Hydra excels at disappearing and making things disappear. We’re finding out about a lot of Hydra outposts right now, just as soon as they go up in smoke."

“We’re not talking about outposts here. These people sound like the backbone of Hydra. The ones creating the—” 

“I know Cap. And it’s a nice idea to go after the guys making the weapons but I’ve got my hands full with bases that are already full of their weapons. That’s my priority.”

“We may not get another chance to stamp out Hydra at the source.”

“Yeah and we may not get a chance to see tomorrow if I can’t find three newly discovered nuclear silos that are, and I’m quoting the field report here, ‘somewhere north of Moscow.’”

Steve sits on the edge of his bed.

“I need to do this, Maria.”

“I figured you’d say that.”

“I need your help.”

“I know Steve. I’m saying this because it’s true: I can’t promise anything.”

“Okay. What about Nick?”

“What about him?”

“Where is he?”

“I have no idea.”

“Maria, come on.”

“I really, honestly have no idea. He’s taking care of some things in Europe. Completely off the grid. Even my grid.”

“Can you get ahold of him?”

“No. Off the grid means off the grid.”

“Well, I’m not sure I have— a full team right now.”

“You’re going to have to make your own phone calls.”

“Fine. Can you send supplies?”

“If you file mission reports it’ll be easier for me to justify the resources.”

“Justify the resources?”

“There’s a lot of new oversight around here.”

Steve listens to the silence, “Is this call being monitored?”

“Of course not,” One of the first things Steve learned at SHIELD was the code phrase that confirmed: yes, this call is being monitored. He wonders if that code is written down in a file that is also being monitored. 

“Can I leave a friend in this house while I’m out?”

“I think that’s a bad idea.”

“You said it was secure.”

“It is. I think it would be a bad idea for you.”

Steve blinks at the carpet.

“Your friend knows the area a lot better than you do. I’d take him, unless you want to look like a tourist out there.”

“He’s not feeling well.”

“It’s your call.”

Steve says nothing.

“Last thing, Steve. We dug through the Romanian utility records. Unless Hydra opened up their own plumbing system, which is something we’ve seen in larger facilities, that base hadn’t been used in over fifteen years.”

The line goes dead before Steve can thank her.

 

* * *

 

They have a big conversation about going out in the morning. Steve wants everyone to stay in the house. One man out at a time. Bucky thinks they’re fine as long as one person is watching the house.

“I don’t like leaving a man alone,” Steve says with his mouth pulling to one side.

“But you’d be fine with one man going out alone. He just can’t be in the house alone.” Bucky pins him with his eyes and Steve holds his gaze, “Because you’re thinking if one person went out, it definitely wouldn’t be me. And If one person stayed in, it could easily be me.”

Now Steve’s holding his eyes like it’s a challenge.

“You don’t want to leave me alone.”

“No I don’t.”

“Why.”

“Because you were nearly captured.”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah it is.”

Sam interrupts, “Okay, let’s all go. We’re all going out. Bucky, get a coat on that arm.”

Bucky drops Steve’s eyes, turning toward Sam, “Why don’t you get me a skin sleeve instead.”

“That’s gross.”

“Coats are hot.”

“But, skin sleeve? You couldn’t think of a less creepy way to say that?”

Bucky snorts. He shrugs on the light coat they bought at a discount clothing store in Greece and pulls a cap low over his eyes, “Why doesn’t Captain America have to wear a disguise?"

Sam grabs the car keys from the counter, “Nobody’s tried to kill him yet.”

Bucky barks a laugh, mumbling under his breath, “Recently.”

 

* * *

 

Steve does most of the shopping alone anyway. Sam and Bucky loiter in front of the cheese, making increasingly outlandish bets about how much mozzarella they could fit in their mouths. They meet Steve at the cashier with a basket full of it.

“Wow,” Steve starts unloading far more reasonable foods onto the belt, “Are you going to eat all of that?”

Sam deadpans, “All in one bite,” and Bucky cracks up behind him. Steve’s eyes catch on Bucky’s face. He looks happy. The creases at the corners of his eyes deepen when he smiles. The rings under his eyes are just shadows. 

 

* * *

 

True to his word, Sam starts packing fresh mozzarella into his mouth as soon as they get home. He keeps squishing the white mass deeper into his mouth, until Bucky suspects he’s pushing it straight down his throat. 

He grabs Sam’s hand and pulls back, “Okay, okay, You’re gonna start digesting the beginning before you get to the end.” Sam laughs, chokes, shakes his head, and keeps tearing pieces off the mozzarella ball in front of him and stuffing them in. Now Bucky’s laughing and Sam’s trying very hard not to. Steve joins in, patting Sam on the back, which makes Bucky laugh harder. Sam chokes and shoots a dirty look over his shoulder. 

“Oh, don’t choke,” Steve murmurs under his breath and pats him again, a little harder. Sam spins around to smack his hand away. Bucky’s laughing so hard he’s tearing up.

Bucky pulls out the kitchen scale with one hand wiping his eyes. He’s still laughing when he sets a bowl on the scale and chokes out, “Okay spit it up. We’ll get an official weight.”

Sam shakes his head and stuffs in a few more huge pieces, anchoring them with an edge wedged under his teeth.

“That’s definitely cheating,” Steve shakes his head.

“No such thing,” Bucky keeps his eyes on Sam.

Sam finally spits the mouthful into the bowl. He has to dig a few pieces of cheese out of his throat with his finger, which makes both Steve and Bucky turn away with disgusted sounds.

“Hey,” Sam’s voice is rough when he finally clears his throat, “Save it till we know who won.”

Bucky goes next. He starts laughing when his mouth is barely half-full. Steve keeps poking him in the ribs with Sam goading him on, until Bucky catches both of Steve’s hands in his metal hand and, amazingly, manages to smirk through a mouth full of cheese. He bests Sam’s weight, but barely.

Steve starts pushing cheese into his mouth, though he never said he’d play this game. Bucky and Sam are merciless. They poke and sucker punch and do their best to distract. At one point, Bucky upends a container full of brine down the back of Steve’s shirt.

Everyone freezes. The brine splashes onto the kitchen floor. Then Steve lifts another piece of cheese and pushes it inside his cheek.

Sam chokes out a stunned sound. Bucky shakes his head and murmurs, “We’re done for.” Steve beats him by a gram.

 

* * *

 

They all go out again in the afternoon. Just for a walk, no destination in mind. Bucky speaks Italian with the waiters standing under restaurant awnings on their smoke breaks. Steve watches him when they’re in a loud crowd. He’s either unfazed or an excellent actor.

When they’re walking along the water front, Sam and Bucky start skimming stones into the harbor. Steve drops back a few paces and calls the number written in neat pencil on the back of the folder holding the cryogenic storage log. It rings twice and sounds a tone like an answering machine. 

Steve keeps it brief, “Hi, it’s Steve. We’re all okay. Found our friend. Need to uh— get on the road again, and we could use some company. Maria knows where we are.” He pauses for a second, searching for the words, “Hope you’re doing well.” He almost adds, ‘See you soon,’ shuts his mouth instead, and ends the call.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what you think?”

“Yeah I don’t know yet.”

Bucky exhales in a huff, “Well let me know when you’ve had time to think it over,” his voice crackles with sarcasm.

Steve feels anger of his own rise up in response, “We don’t know who really wrote them. It doesn’t mean anything, Bucky. Not yet.”

Bucky spins on him with angry eyes, “Yeah, clearly.”

“What’s wrong? I don’t understand—”

Bucky’s lip is curling up again, “I just didn’t think you’d need proof.”

“What?”

“I didn’t think you’d need proof that I was telling you the truth.” Bucky jabs his chest, “Isn’t the shit that I went through to get here—to even get those letters in your hand—enough for you?”

“It’s not about that,” Steve’s trying to hold his eyes, “It’s not about you.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

  
_The asset understands that emotion is a tool and a weapon.  
_

 

* * *

 

“Yeah I think it is. I think this is about me.”

Steve’s face hardens.

“Wake the fuck up. You thought you were coming to save me. You thought the worst thing that could happen to me was that I’d come back a different man. Well guess what, I came back exactly the same and I’m all fucked up,” Bucky’s leaning in, his eyes are black and hurt, “because I’ve always been all this way. I just used to be better at hiding it. Now I’m all ripped up and all my insides and secrets and decades-old bullshit are spilling out all over the place and you’re fucking terrified.” Bucky stabs a finger at his face, “There is no Bucky to get back. There is no other guy. There is no then and now, it’s all the same. I am Bucky. And now you just have to fucking live with that, Steve.” Bucky slams his hands against his chest, yelling, “ _Like I do._ ”

Bucky drops back. He’s panting, giving Steve a look that would cut through a lesser man. The silence hangs for a long minute. When Bucky speaks again, his voice is quiet, “I know that’s not easy to hear. But it’s true.”

“It’s not true, Buck.” Steve’s voice is even quieter. 

“Then you tell me why I’m here,” Bucky’s head tips back on his neck, he looks at Steve through lidded eyes. His anger is spent and his face looks tired, “You tell me why they picked some random American with a mangled arm, a guy they found bleeding out in the snow, and made him your worst nightmare. Even if they knew what I was to you, you’d been dead for years when they gave me the serum.”

Bucky’s breathing has settled. Steve watches him, the way his fists open and close with no menace.

“Even if you were a nobody, why would they pick another nobody? One without a pure heart,” Bucky sneers the words through his teeth, “Why not pick someone brave? Someone smart? Why would they pick a guy whose saving grace was that he’d do _anything_ ,” Bucky’s voice drops on the last word, “to stay alive?”

Steve holds his gaze. He has no answer.  


 

* * *

 

Steve’s phone rings when the house is silent and dark. It’s late but he doesn’t keep track of the time when he’s sitting alone in the dark kitchen, staring out at the garden. It’s an unlisted number, as are most of the numbers that call Steve’s phone.

“Hello?”

“Live target. Extraction in ten minutes. Transport and ammunition for three. Double blind. No back up. No pick up.” Steve stands swiftly and starts running toward the stairs. Maria is using mission communications protocol.

“What’s the target?” Steve is not using mission communications protocol.

“Bunker north of Brig, Switzerland. It’s on fire.”

“In the Alps?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Hydra?”

“That’s what you’re going to tell me.”

Maria ends the call. Steve reaches the top of the stairs and stops. His heart is racing, mind spinning. He hadn’t taken the time to tell Sam and Bucky that he had signed them up for breaking into all of the Hydra labs Maria could find. With ten minutes to go before a helicopter wakes up the neighborhood, Steve stares at Bucky’s door and can’t imagine how to start that conversation.

Suddenly, Bucky’s door flies open. He’s buttoning a one-armed leather jacket over his chest one handed. There are three guns holstered on his hips and he’s tucking one between his shoulder blades with his other hand, “When were you going to tell me we’re going to Switzerland?”

“Uh.”

“Do you have coats?”

“No.”

“We need coats.”

“They’ll probably have…”

“But do you know they’ll have them? Will they be warm? Going into the Alps with shitty coats is literally the last thing I want to do.” Bucky finishes fastening his jacket, unholsters one of the guns from his hip, flicks it open to check the ammunition, and holsters it again in one smooth motion.

Sam’s door swings open. His face is pinched in confusion and sleep, “What the fuck? Coats? What’s—” He sees Bucky’s combat gear and turns sharply back into his room.

“I’ll make sure we get coats,” Steve starts walking toward his own room, “Is there anything else you need? I’m sorry I didn’t—”

Sam bursts back into his doorway with combat trousers on, stopping his momentum with a hand on the door frame, “How long?”

“Under ten minutes.”

 

* * *

 

Suddenly, standing in the grass and looking up at a falling light, Steve feels clarity. His bones are aligned. His body is ready. He breathes easy. His mind and his eyes agree on what they see.

The helicopter whips up the air, sending it through his hair, beating it against his slitted eyes in waves. Its spotlight lands on the three men, standing together in thick-soled boots and clothes that hide weapons as well as they cover skin, and the light goes out. The helicopter descends in darkness. The sides of the machine’s belly are open and they climb inside as soon as the chopper’s foot is low enough to grab.

They have coats. Bucky steps on one and pulls it taught between his boot and his hand. He stabs roughly at the fabric with a knife from his jacket. Bucky sheathes his knife, lifts the coat, holds it out in front of him, turning it slowly in the helicopter’s harsh internal lighting. It’s unscathed. Bucky nods once at Steve and folds the coat over his knee.

“Do you know of a base in Switzerland?” Steve straps himself into the seat next to Bucky.

“Not sure.” Bucky looks different with his combat gear on. The collar of his coat rises up around his neck. It looks more like armor than anything Steve wears, “Guess I’ll found out when we get there.”

“What are we doing there?” Sam yells over the blade noise, “Blowing it up?”

“Somebody already took care of that for us. We’re looking for leads on Zola’s network.”

“I thought you didn’t believe those letters.” Bucky speaks to his knees. Steve turns to look at his profile.

“They’re still the best lead we have.”

“On a ring that could be long gone. Last time that Romanian base was operational was over ten years ago. The most recent letter was from the 70s.”

“How do you know the lab wasn’t operational?”

“Because I was walking around in there when it blew up. The place was covered in cobwebs,” Bucky’s brows are drawn impatiently, “What are you looking for?”

Steve meets his glare with another, “Leads.”

Bucky turns away with a shake of his head. 

“So,” Sam gestures at the four man crew, all dressed in black, “are these guys coming along?”

“No, just dropping us off.”

“Okay good because I was hoping we could storm another super-secure crazy science bunker on our own,” Sam deadpans.

Steve turns back to Bucky, “Hey,” he pauses but Bucky doesn’t look up, “Is this okay for you? You don’t have to come.”

Bucky shrugs, “Another day in the office. Isn’t that what Dugan used to say?”

“Yeah I just— If you’re not feeling well…” Steve picks at the seam of his glove.

“I’m fine. This is what I do.”

“I know,” the words push away the fog in Steve’s mind, “I know it is. If you want to stop, you can stop.”

“Yeah,” Bucky pulls his coat on over his gear, “I’ll let you know.”

Steve doesn’t reply and the three of them fall silent. 

Almost two hours pass before he asks Bucky, “Why didn’t you recognize me in D.C.?”

“What?” Bucky’s face is open if slightly confused. 

“When you saw me on the bridge. And on the helicarrier. You didn’t know me,” Steve searches his eyes, “You didn’t remember me.”

Bucky stills, “Are you sure about that.”

Steve’s heart starts to curl itself up again, “What?”

“Maybe—” Bucky swallows and pauses, “Maybe it was easier for you to think I didn’t know you.”

“Easier for who?”

“For me. For my mission.”

Steve recoils. He can’t find words. He shakes his head in disbelief, “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’ve been playing my cards close to the chest for a long time. And maybe you showing up again didn’t mean shit to me.” Bucky’s face is drawn. His voice reveals nothing, “Some people look at you and see freedom. I guess I can see that too. But not my freedom. You have always been my mission.” Bucky slides his flesh thumb over his metal wrist, “One way or another.”

Steve is numb. His mouth supplies the inane questions that won’t get him any answers, “Why would you lie to me?”

“It’s easier than the truth, isn’t it?”

“How can you be so sure you know the truth?”

“How can you?” Bucky won’t meet his eyes. His voice is flat.

Steve’s chest is tight, he can feel anger thrumming behind his breastbone. He waits until he can speak without his voice sharpening to a tip, “Then why did you pull me out of the river.”

“Because trying to save the asshole who’s been lying to you your whole life is a shitty way to die.”

Anger flares, too hot and urgent in his chest, Steve bites out the words, “That’s not what you are.” 

Bucky says nothing.

Steve turns away, staring at the cockpit, trying to get his head back in the mission.

 

* * *

 

The base is built into a mountain. Or was built into a mountain before it become a black, smoky crater in a mountain. The helicopter hovers directly over the wreck and lowers each man down into the rubble. They land on what looks like it was once an astronomical observation deck. A massive telescope sits crooked in its mounts in the center of the space. Steve scans the exposed portion of the facility, ducking behind a still standing wall to brace himself against the whipping wind. His lips begin to chap immediately.

He picks out the rough layout of the space from the mangled lines of steel supports sticking up from the rubble. Sam and Bucky trail him, scanning the chaos with guns drawn, a few steps behind. Bucky stays just half a step behind Sam.

Steve finds the elevator shaft, which only allows them to drop three stories before their path is blocked by debris. They heave the doors open and step into a dark hallway. Steve leads them into the heart of the building, illuminating the way with a flashlight that makes the plastic safety warnings stuck to the doors flash and glow.

Steve hears Bucky’s footsteps stop behind him. Steve pauses, alert for threats from any direction, and turns to face him. Bucky is raising his gun to the set of doors on the left side of the hall. He fires a single shot, directly into the lock, and blows the door open with a stiff kick. Steve lifts his flashlight and lights up the lab inside. A sick smell wafts out from the room and there’s a thin red liquid pooling on the floor.

Bucky moves immediately. He walks straight to the back of the lab and pulls out a drawer in the middle of a half-buried desk. His metal fingers curl under the lip of the opening. Steve and Sam wait in the hall, looking on. In the pause, Sam tugs the hood of his coat around to cover his nose and mouth. 

Bucky steps back and closes the drawer. The storage cabinet to his left swings open, revealing opening elevator doors. Bucky walks straight into the box and extends an arm to hold the doors open.

The gesture smacks into Steve like a violation. It’s a motion he’s seen time and time again in this century, by people who are from this century. Sam moves first. He walks straight through the red liquid, as Bucky did, and into the elevator. Steve follows.

The elevator ride is silent. Bucky keeps his gun cocked and pointed at the ceiling. When the box begins to slow, He lowers at the seam between the doors. Over his shoulder, Sam raises his gun and lowers his chin. The doors open to a silent white corridor. It is noticeably, eerily silent. The floors above had creaked and settled, the air was thick was smoke and dust. Down here it is spotless and completely, unbelievably, suspiciously silent. The air smells sweet compared to the air of the lab. 

Bucky leads now, setting a faster pace. They walk for a long way, three times the length of the building visible from the wreck. They do not see or hear any signs of life. There are considerably fewer doors in this hallway.

They pass a door with no lock and no doorknob. Steve stops. Bucky pauses ahead of him and looks over his shoulder. They haven’t been quiet so Steve doesn’t hush his voice to ask, “What’s in here?” He asks like he expects Bucky to know.

Bucky’s eyes flick to the door and back to Steve’s face, “Nuclear launch.”

“What does that mean?”

“That’s all I know.”

“Are there people in there?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“There are always people in there. No way to open it from the outside.”

Steve gives the door a critical look, “We’ll see about that.” He raises his shield and pauses, “How many people?”

“Three.”

“Okay. You take the first guy you see, I’ll take care of the other two. Sam, watch the hall.” 

Sam nods and Bucky just raises his gun.

Steve slams his shield down against the seam of the doors. They buckle inward, widening the gap slightly. He slams the edge of the shield against the gap and the doors fly apart with a spray of sparks. Bucky fires as soon as the doors have opened, two quick shots. By the time Steve’s eyes have found the two operators at their control centers, they are already dead. He spins and  takes two quick steps into the room with his eyes up, scanning. Steve throws his shield up and to the left as soon as he sees the muzzle. The gun discharges a split second before the shield slices it in half. The bullet zings into the floor at Steve’s feet.

Steve catches the shield’s ricochet. He throws it again, angling carefully. The shield catches the top of the visor on the guard’s helmet and rips it back. The force knocks his head hard against the wall behind him. The limp body hits the floor with a thud.

Steve turns to survey the room and Sam comes tumbling through the doorway, scrambling to pull the dented doors closed. He shouts over his shoulder, “ _We got trouble!_ ”

Steve runs up to the control center, eyes jumping from screen to screen. He yanks open the Emergency Procedure manual attached to the panel and flips straight to the back. Behind him, he hears Sam yelling and Bucky ripping metal apart. Gunshots thud into metal and an alarm begins to blare. Steve pushes aside a dead man’s head to grab the red phone next to the monitor. He dials the seven digit code printed next to “In Case of Communications Failure.”

The phone doesn’t ring. Steve presses a finger to his other ear to block out the sound. After three seconds of silence, a male voice answers in English, “This is Ola. Please state your code.” Steve slams the phone into its cradle and spins. Sam is crouched behind the other control panel and Bucky is grabbing anything heavy he can rip up from the floor and throwing it in front of the doors. The rain of bullets on the outside of the door has slowed.

“Is there another way out?”

Bucky barks back, “No.”

“No vents? How does the air get in?”

“This room is on it’s own ventilation system. There are vents but—” Bucky bends swiftly to a tiny rectangular vent near the floor. He rips the cover off and shoves his arm down it. He holds very still. Steve watches him, uncomprehending, until he hears the faintest metal echo between gunshots. The taps continue, getting louder and, abruptly, beginning to ring, like a muffled bell. Bucky pulls his arm free. There’s a soft whirring sound from his arm and he slams his fist into the wall next to the vent. He sinks his fingers into the concrete and rips away a handful of dust and rock.

“Okay, we do _not_ have time to dig through the wall,” Sam calls out from behind the control panel.

“Eight inches, thirty seconds,” is Bucky’s only reply. He continues ripping a deeper and deeper hole in the wall while Steve starts to take stock of the room, looking for structural elements that could protect them from a blast. Bucky punches the wall again, straight through to the space behind. He anchors his metal fingers around the edge of the hole and pulls back with a savage yell. A huge block of concrete comes free. Bucky crawls into the hole without looking back. Steve follows and Sam is close behind. Inside the maintenance tunnel, whose walls are covered with cables and pipes, Steve sees the air vent running along the bottom edge. He realizes Bucky used the echo off the vent to find this space and figure out how thick a wall he would have to tear away to reach it.

They sprint through the dark, tiny LEDs along the tunnel’s low roof lighting their way. Bucky runs in a crouch with his metal arm pushing him forward between strides. It looks nearly inhuman.

Bucky reaches the end of the tunnel first, facing what looks like a huge filter. He starts firing shots into the bolts holding it in place. The sound is deafening in the enclosed space. Steve covers his ears and regrets it; he should have covered Sam’s instead.

Bucky shifts in his crouch and kicks the filter. It falls away and sun streams in, blindingly bright. It takes Steve’s mind a moment to understand the bright blue nothing in front of them. The tunnel must end with the air filter, which used to be mounted outside the facility. Steve re-orients himself. They dropped a long way but they walked just as far. They must be back at the edge of the mountain. Bucky crawls to the end of the tunnel and leans out. He ducks his head back inside just long enough to say, “Grab my boots.”

Steve grabs his right and Sam wedges awkwardly next to him to grab Bucky’s left. He tries to make eye contact with Sam but they’re whirling out into the air a second later. Steve’s shoulder connects hard with a stripped bolt on his way out. He feels the metal rip a notch from his skin.

The sudden release from a tight space into nothingness makes Steve’s body pull taught. Gravity yanks at him hard. He grips Bucky’s leg tightly and instinctively ducks his head, closes his eyes, braces for impact. Impact doesn’t come and instinct snaps his head up. Whiplash smacks into the space behind his eyes. Steve has lost his equilibrium, can’t figure out which direction they’re moving. They’re not falling but the mountains and the sky are spinning past in a blur, momentum replacing gravity. Time slows as they stop at the top of their parabola, then begin to accelerate back toward the mountain.

Sam yells, “Windows, on your right, 30 feet down.” Steve looks right and finds the panel of glass inset under a rocky overhang.

Bucky doesn’t respond and Steve looks up in time to see him shoot another rappelling hook and line into the rock over the window. He grips the new line in his left hand and slices the line that’s connected to his belt, the one holding them up. Weightless again as they drop, swinging toward the glass. Steve throws his shield and the pane shatters. 

The three of them come crashing past the glass shards, rolling onto a carpeted floor. Steve is on his feet first. He grabs his shield, looks up, freezes, and grins.

Natasha doesn’t smile back. From her seat in a plush armchair in the middle of what looks like an excessively opulent office, she throws a metal box at Bucky’s feet and says, “Where is it.” 

Bucky stands quickly, not meeting her eyes, “Not here.” He scans the room, eyes flying along the seam between the domed ceiling and the wall, “This is a trap.” 

As if waiting for their cue, three dozen black muzzles emerge from tiny trap doors in the ceiling, all pointed straight down. A voice rings out from above, “Welcome. Captain America and the Winter Soldier, our prodigal sons come home—”

Bucky sprints to the wall and Steve sprints to Natasha’s chair. Sam meets him there and the three of them fall into a too familiar huddle under Steve’s shield just before the bullets begin to rain.

The chorus of guns discharge rapidly and in unison, ripping holes through the carpet, sending up clouds of dust. Steve counts only four rounds before the battery stops. He lifts the shield an inch to see Bucky crouched on top of a bookshelf, next to one of the lowest guns. Its barrel is now a bent knot and there’s a mess of sliced wires hanging next to it. 

Bucky jumps off the bookshelf and walks straight to the door. He says, “Tell me you brought something that can cut steel.”

Natasha replies, uncurling herself from the chair to follow him, “How do you think I got in here?”

Bucky just says, “Stick to the hinges.”

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early chapter!

* * *

_  
The asset can perceive individuals holistically, or catalogue them as strengths and weaknesses, fears and aspirations, and act on this intelligence to advance the mission objective._

_  
_

* * *

 

Natasha crouches next to the door and attaches a slim metal device to the lower hinge. Bucky looks directly at Steve, “Give me your shield.” Steve tosses it to him. He and Sam retreat to the far corner of the room, and watch as Bucky crushes the doorknob in his hand and pulls it straight out of the door.

The sound of voices yelling combat commands leaps through the tiny gap. Bucky wedges the shield at his feet and crouches behind it. He grabs the automatic weapon between his shoulder blades and fires a single shot into the door, just above the doorknob hole. Bucky lifts his head, looking through the bullet hole for less than a second, then tucks himself behind the shield, shoves the muzzle of the gun through the bigger hole, and holds down the trigger. He pivots the barrel as the bullets spray into the hall.

The return fire begins immediately. Natasha is over halfway done with the hinges. Bucky keeps himself tucked behind the shield, raising his head for a fraction of a second at a time to check the scene outside the door. Heavy artillery eats the door away and Bucky squints his eyes like the flying splinters are just an annoyance. The bullets slow. Bucky raises his head and fires three short bursts. The bullets stop.

He stands, pulls the shield up from the floor, and tosses it back to Steve. Natasha kicks the door down. They leave the room in a run. Steve’s boot lands on a dead man’s hand when he crosses over the pile of black-clothed bodies. 

The walls are stark concrete, harsh seams still visible from when they were poured into place. Bucky takes two left turns and opens a wooden door. He pulls the chain hanging from a single bulb in the ceiling to reveal a stone staircase. He heads straight down, gun at the ready.

Steve pushes past Natasha to follow directly behind Bucky. If this is a trap, they’re much too far from the surface to backtrack. Steve keeps his eyes on Bucky’s dark hair as they drop into the dark. At the bottom of the staircase, Bucky pulls another chain and three incandescent bulbs flicker on. There are cobwebs swaying from the low ceiling. 

Bucky walks to the end of the hallway. The walls are rough-hewn stone and the ground is uneven. He kicks open the last door with his gun at his side. It’s a simple office with a dusty metal desk. A file cabinet stands with all of its drawers ajar, each of them empty. Bucky walks behind the desk, kneels, lifts it up and pushes it to the side. He peels a tile off the floor and pulls a metal box out from under it. Bucky tucks the box inside his jacket and replaces the tile, then replaces the desk.

He walks straight past the three people watching him from the doorway and asks, “You have your wings?” 

“Yeah,” Sam replies.

Bucky opens a door on the right side of the hall, disappearing without a backward look. The group follows him and Steve enters last to see Bucky sitting on the edge of a metal trash chute. He looks at Steve to say, “Sam goes last,” and drops out of sight. Steve immediately grabs Natasha under the arms and drops her down the chute before she can insist he goes next. Steve smells the gas as soon as he drops in after her and hears Sam land hard against the chute’s floor right behind him. The pipe twists, rattling dangerously around them. Sun light breaks in where the top has been corroded by the elements. The bottom of the pipe deteriorates to rust where the rain has settled over the years and Steve drops straight past the jagged metal and out into nothing. Dropping off the edge of the mountain again. He twists in the air, looking down to see Bucky and Natasha falling face down with their arms and legs spread to slow the descent. They keep their faces toward the clouds that hide rocky peaks and wait for the ground or Sam’s hands, whichever comes first. Steve spreads his arms and legs as well, fighting the wind to keep them extended. 

Sam drops past him in a blur. His wings are already extended, tucked behind him in a long arrow point. He plummets down to Bucky, grabs him with an arm around his waist, twists in the air, right wing spreading to its full breadth, and Bucky catches Natasha with his left hand. Sam holds still, falling backward with one spread wing slowing his fall, and Steve understands what is expected of him. They collide less than a second later and Steve closes his arms around Sam’s legs.

Sam steadies himself and they start to coast. Steve looks up to see a fountain of flame lick out the end of the rotting chute. Sam heads for a clearing on the edge of a valley with a few visible farm houses. The air warms as they drop. 

 

* * *

 

They take shelter in a barn whose door has rotted away. Natasha and Bucky leave in search of first aid supplies because they both speak Swiss German. 

They have a brief conversation in Russian before setting out. Bucky combs his hair with his fingers and draws it together at the nape of his neck. He holds out his hand and Natasha gives him a hair tie. He slips his hair through it with practiced ease. It’s warm in the valley but Bucky keeps his coat on. 

“You know how to start a fire with damp wood?” Sam asks when they’re alone.

Steve makes a single sound like a laugh and replies, “Yeah I’m an expert.”

They scrounge enough dry wood from a stack of forgotten firewood to get a fire going and pull a few long boards, which used to be part of the barn wall, around it as benches. Sam takes off his boots and lays out his socks to dry.

“He thinks it’s his fault,” Steve offers, apropos of nothing, “That’s what kills me. It’s not the story. I knew— I figured— It makes sense. That they messed with his mind. They had to, you know? He never would have done— But that’s not,” Steve takes a deep breath, “The worst part is that he thinks it’s his fault. He thinks he’s been in control the whole time. That he’s been doing horrible things since he was a child. He thinks this is who he really is.” Steve looks up at Sam. 

“Well,” Sam looks back, something careful in his eyes, “That’s not surprising. He’s been through a lot. ‘Torture’ is putting it lightly.”

“Why would they want him to think he’s the one in charge though?”

“Well, you can’t escape yourself. Put a power above a man and he’ll rebel. But if he’s the one calling the shots, if he’s doing it to save his own skin—” Sam shrugs.

“He hates himself.”

“Maybe. Maybe he just hates being here again.”

“—where?” 

Sam gestures to himself. His hands glance over the guns strapped to his legs and he raises his eyebrows.

“Oh— yeah.” Steve looks down, “I wanted to leave him at the safe house,”

“He wouldn’t have stayed put.”

“I know.”

They stare at the crackling fire for a while.

“And he thinks I can’t accept him like this,” Steve says, as if continuing a point. 

“You can’t though,” Sam picks at his fingernail, “Not the man he thinks he is.”

Steve stares at Sam for a minute. He turns to look at the fire again. Long after the silence closed the conversation’s thread, Steve says, almost to himself, “Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky and Sam sleep first. Steve and Natasha sit side-by-side next to the fire. Steve angles himself toward her so he can pull his jacket down off his shoulder. The gash should have healed by now but it’s still wet and throbbing.

Natasha cleans it with a piece of damp gauze and picks out flecks of dirt and metal shavings with a pair of turquoise tweezers. She and Bucky had returned with three first aid kits and a bag full of assorted half-used tubes from farmers’ bathroom counters. 

“He told me,” Natasha murmurs, “while we were out. About you.”

Steve considers what to say. He runs his fingers over the ripped fabric of his jacket’s shoulder.

“How are you doing?” Natasha’s voice is neutral.

“Fine,” Steve answers before he really thinks about the question.

The silence is staticky. Steve tries to clear the lines, “How did you know about the boxes?”

“I’ve seen them before. Hydra doesn’t use them anymore, obviously. But bringing back a full one could earn you a promotion." 

“At SHIELD? Or before?”

“Both.”

“So they’re real?”

Natasha lifts the tweezers and looks at his profile, “What does that mean?”

“They’re really written by the people whose names are signed at the bottom.”

Natasha is quiet for a moment, “That’s a dangerous way of thinking.”

Steve is about to ask what that means when she continues, “Anyway, they never have anything but sentimental letters anymore.”

“Why would they keep those?”

“You know how old men like to put on their military uniforms for parades?” There’s a hint of a smile in her voice.

Steve changes direction, “Why did the recording call us prodigal sons?”

“I don’t know,” she smears a cool gel across Steve’s wound, “Think of it this way. Someone sane doesn’t come to believe something so strongly if they’re the only ones who believe it. If his reality is a Hydra creation, there are probably a lot of people inside Hydra living that same reality.”

“What do you mean, ‘if’?”

“If.”

Steve stiffens. He doesn’t push her. “That was an old office.”

“It was an old man’s office.”

“We could have gotten better intel if we had found the current offices.”

“Is that what you wanted?”

“Good intel?”

“Current intel.” 

Steve exhales. “It’s easier to change the words of people who are dead.” 

“But it’s easier to make a living man change his mind.”

“We were sloppy, Nat. We failed. We shouldn’t have left without burning that place to ground.”

Natasha tapes a bandage into place, “Any mission without an objective is a failure.”

“You’re saying I don’t have an objective.”

“I’m saying you have too many. What are you trying to do?”

“I want to show Bucky the truth.”

“Finding the truth and helping him are two different things.”

Steve shrugs his jacket back into place.

“Which matters more to you?” Natasha’s voice is direct, but not unkind.

Steve meets her eyes, “Helping him. I already know the truth.”

 

* * *

 

**_Mission Report_ **

_Reporting Agent: Captain Rogers_

 

_Mission objective: Achieved_

_Intel acquired. No team casualties. Discovered deep bunker underneath demolished base. Obtained required assets and evacuated._

 

_Secondary mission outcomes:_

_Nuclear launch team neutralized._

 

_Action required (Recommend required assets):_

_Clean up of known base. Strike team recommended._

_Investigate possible nuclear weapon silo in Ola, Russia._

 

_Team Status (If compromised, detail condition):_

_Agent Romanov: Operational_

_Agent Wilson: Operational_

_Sergeant Barnes: Compromised_

_Barnes is a functional and valuable member of the team. He is suffering from psychological distress after a period of Hydra captivity. No further action required._

 

* * *

 

Steve wakes up when the sky is already dark blue. He sits up and feels Natasha stir in her nest of coats and “borrowed” blankets from the farmhouse up the road. He slept with his clothes and boots on so he just stands up and walks straight out the barn door.

Bucky is holding an iron pan over the fire with his metal hand and Sam is shaking his head. They’re talking, voices low. Sam elbows him in the ribs and Bucky grins. He feints like he’s going to throw the hot pan at Sam. Sam doesn’t flinch. 

Bucky looks up when he sees Steve approaching. He smiles and says, “Steve, your favorite! Oatmeal.”

“You’re kidding,” Steve calls back. 

“I’m not.”

Sam calls out, “Yeah Mr. Laughs over here thought you’d like that. We got sausages and oranges too. Like a shitload of oranges,” Sam reaches out of sight and lifts a huge lumpy bag, “So if you want to start peeling these suckers…” He sets the oranges down next one of the makeshift benches. 

Steve smiles, sits, and stretches his feet out toward the fire. Bucky tosses him the metal box without a word. The lock is already picked. Steve flicks open the lid: three letters. He spreads the first one over his knee and reaches for an orange to peel. His fingers work sightlessly while he reads.

_October 11th, 1950_

_Mr. Thompson,_

_Stark is a fool. I know you have invested a great deal of energy wishing otherwise but the time has come to abandon hope of cooperation. He is focused on weapons development at the exclusion of all else. We must carry on with our work._

_Though you may respect his cunning, you must see he is afraid of that which he cannot control. He may engineer the bomb or jet or suit, but gives no thought to the man behind its controls. It is the gravest possible oversight and makes me question how this man is credited with such genius. Can a machine with a fatal flaw be praised as a good effort if it fails to fulfill its purpose? Of course not. So how can a weapon of destruction with a mere mortal in the cockpit be considered a success?_

_Already I have had to wrestle one of our projects out of the clutches of an eagle-eyed woman by the name of Carter. The lead scientist has been recommissioned and I fear it will take years before he can reassemble the resources necessary to continue his work. This letter is not a request. Further cooperation with SHIELD will not be tolerated, no matter how advantageous the political possibilities._

_Regards,_

_Dr. Arnim Zola_

Steve folds the letter and sets it back in the box. He pulls off his coat and spreads it out on the ground, then dumps the small mound of peeled oranges in his lap onto it. He spreads the second letter across his knee.

_April 18th, 1952_

_Mr. Thompson,_

_Again, I urge patience in this matter. No amount of hand-wringing will bring the asset to completion before its time. Furthermore, we have nothing to fear. This nation is nearly paralyzed by its fear of the Great Red Threat. Even here, layers and layers of rock below the lowest lair of political hell, they are strangling themselves. SHIELD has pointed all of its weapons inward. Like all loyal Americans, they have turned a critical eye to their neighbor, they have straightened their backs and toed the party line. Honestly, it is tiresome to find one’s self back in a fearful republic, trading stiff-armed salutes for humble hands over hearts._

_However, I can tolerate this annoyance only because it distracts those with the power to meddle from our work. While they spend their efforts expelling agents with hearsay connections or liberal sympathies, they allow the Departments of Weapons Development and, critically, Experimental Science, to grow unchecked and unfettered._

_So patience, comrade, (You see! Your rude jokes about my wit are unfounded) the asset is nearly ready for the field._

_Regards,_

_Dr. Arnim Zola_

Steve slips the second letter into the box and pulls out the third. Sam side steps around the fire to hand him a skewer of roasted sausages. On his way back around, he pulls the two letters from the box and hands them to Bucky. 

_February 6th, 1957_

_Mr. Thompson,_

_Please send word to our associates that there will be a demonstration on April 12th at our facility in Gdańsk. Security will be provided to and from the port. To satisfy the Minister’s question: yes, the arm is ready for the field. It will be featured during the demonstration._

_Respectfully,_

_Dr. Nikita Yeshevsky_

Steve sets the last letter in the box and stands. He leaves his coat under the mound of oranges and walks off into the surrounding field. When he is almost out of earshot, he stops and pulls out his phone. 

Maria answers instantly, “Thanks for the Ola tip, you were right.”

“No problem.”  

“They’re resetting. Blowing up all the existing facilities and falling into radio silence.”

“Okay,” Steve kneels to pick at the grass, “I’ll send you the letter scans soon. In the mean time, two new names: Thompson and Yeshevsky. I think the second one was involved in—” Steve clenches his jaw, “in Bucky’s—” the word ‘torture’ sits so close to the surface, resting on the tip of his tongue behind his teeth, but Steve can’t say it. 

“I’ll look into it. I consider you on call if another base shows up.”

Steve can’t disguise the irritation in his voice, “We’re just going to wait for them to blow up?”

“Unless you can find them first.”

“I have no way of doing that.”

“You’ve got some friends who can.”

“I’m not calling him.”

“Look, Steve. SHIELD is— changing. Dramatically. We are scrambling,” Maria’s voice edges into something sharper than Steve has heard in a long time, “to cover ourselves. I cannot support you here. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”

“I understand. You know, a good leader knows how to rebuild.”

“You’re welcome to look for him.”

“I will.”

Steve hangs up and walks back to the fire. He sits down next to Bucky.

“Do you know how many labs there are? Or were? In this network?”

Bucky doesn’t turn to face him; they’re sitting too close. He says to the fire, “No.”

“But you knew your way around in there.”

Bucky nods, “Visual triggers. Situation specific memory. I know the way when I see it.”

“Okay. Are there— Do you know more than the path to the box?”

Bucky stares straight ahead. He blinks slowly, “Yes.”

“What else can you find?”

“Depends. On the lab.” Bucky’s chin is tucking, voice dropping, “Utility masters, communication hubs, holding areas, escape passages, cold storage…”

“Can you just let us know when you see a path to one of those places?”

“Why?”

“It would be helpful.”

“What would it help you do,” Bucky’s voice is souring.

Steve feels frustration climbing up his shoulders, instead of biting back he says, “I know you want to wipe them out, too.”

Bucky recoils, brows furrowing. His head snaps to look at Steve, hair falling in his face, “You have no idea what I want. I don’t give a fuck about revenge.”

“Then why are you here?” Steve’s voice is level despite the sickening wash in his stomach.

“To tell you the truth.”

“You want me to believe it?”

“What is this? A game?” Bucky stands, disgust dripping from his words.

“Then prove it to me.”

Bucky stares down at him. He’s breathing hard through his nose, “Go fuck yourself.”

“I want to know the truth.”

“You’re a manipulative bastard,” Bucky snarls at him, “Don’t act like there’s any question in your mind. You think I’m on a mission,” Bucky gestures at his head with a sharp hand, “You think they’ve bent me so bad I can’t see straight anymore. I know a fucking play when I see one.” 

Steve stares back at him with hard eyes. He keeps his seat.

“I will help you,” Bucky leans down, spitting, “I just want to hear you say it. You’re looking for some off switch, trying to figure out how to fix me. You want the keys to the information in my head so you can steer me out of the maze you think I’m trapped in. I want to hear you say it. Say I’m insane.”

“I don’t think you’re insane.”

Bucky makes a disbelieving sound and steps over the bench to leave.

“I want to trust you. I need to know you trust me to do that.”

Bucky stops. He stands with his back to Steve for a minute, then walks away.

 

* * *

 

“Hi Peggy.”

“Hello Steve.”

“I’m sorry to bother you so late.”

“Nonsense, it’s always a pleasure. I revel in the jealous looks from the girls across the hall.”

Steve laughs softly. He pauses before asking, “Hey Peggy, do you remember a suspicious SHIELD project around 1950?”

“Suspicious?”

“Yeah, probably would have been science focused, experimental science.”

Peggy hums thoughtfully.

“I think your investigation might have led to a scientist being recommissioned?”

“No, I’m sorry. I can’t remember anything like that.”

“Hey, no problem. I won’t keep you. Thanks for taking my call.”

“Of course, anytime,” she pauses a moment, “Steve? Truly. Anytime.”

“Alright, I know. Thanks again.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading along lovelies! ^.^


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

  
_The asset communicates to gather information, build rapport, and organize action. He does not use language to express himself._   
  


* * *

 

Maria puts together a pick up team by the end of the next day. Another helicopter, another white van. A new camp in the French countryside, somewhere west of Ancy-le-Franc. Everything they left at the house in Naples is there, thrown into four heavy black canvas bags. 

“Any word on a new safe house?” Steve doesn’t even stand up from his seat by their fire to make the call.

“My hands are tied.”

“Thanks for all your help.”

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere.”

“Hey, can’t a guy say thanks?”

“Not when he’s about to ask for another favor.”

“No new favors, just checking in on the old ones. Any word on Gohl?”

“No.”

“Thompson?”

No.”

“Yeshevsky?”

Maria pauses a fraction of a second too long, “No." 

“Alright well thanks for checking.”

Maria ends the call in reply.

Steve looks up at the faces around the fire, “We need to find a new place to stay.” He pauses, then revises, “We need to find an empty, unoccupied structure that we don’t have to damage to stay in.”

 

* * *

 

It takes just under half the night to find a house for sale. 

Natasha is sweeping the house for bugs while Steve brings a pot of water to boil. She’s crouching and twisting to look under the kitchen sink when Steve says, “We need to find Fury.”

“Okay,” her muffled voice through the cabinets.

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“Any ideas on finding him?”

Natasha backs out of the cabinet and stands, “Are you asking me to find him?”

“Can you?”

“I can try.”

“Alright. Thank you.”

Natasha goes back to inspecting the cabinets. Steve makes four mugs of strong tea with a box of black tea forgotten on a high shelf.

They sit around the square kitchen table and eat as many oranges as they can stand.

“I’d take oatmeal over this,” Sam announces.

Bucky snorts.

“No I’m serious. Let’s go get some fucking oatmeal.” Sam sets his fist firmly on the table. 

Bucky says something in another language and Natasha flicks an orange peel at him.

“You coming, Nat? I’m on a mission.”

“Are you walking?”

“No I’m flying.”

Suddenly all eyes are on Sam. He purses his lips, “Hm, that joke kind of loses its magic when you actually could fly.” He closes his eyes and nods, “I’m walking.”

Natasha stands with a roll of her eyes and a fond smile. They leave out the back door.

Steve and Bucky sweep the orange peels off the table and into a plastic bag.

“Leave them by the kitchen door to keep the ants away,” Bucky gestures with his flesh and blood hand.

Steve smiles, “Wow, housekeeping tips. You learn that in the Army?”

“I was never in the Army.”

Steve doesn’t even have the presence of mind to pause, “What are you talking about?”

Bucky leans against the table and crosses his arms. He doesn’t repeat himself.

Steve sets down the bag, “You were in the Army. Your whole regiment was captured by Hydra and I broke you out of a lab in—”

“But you saw me in combat?” Bucky’s voice is flat and challenging.

“Yes,” Steve’s voice pitches up incredulously, “We served dozens of missions together.”

“With the Commandos.”

“Yes.”

“But before that? Before the lab?” 

Steve shakes his head, uncomprehending, “What are you saying?”

“I’m trying to tell you I was never in the Army. The serum was ready and you were ready and they needed me out of the picture. So they gave me fake orders to show you and shipped me to Austria. I was in that godforsaken lab for almost six months.”

Bucky sits back down. Steve is gripping the top edge of the nearest kitchen chair.

“Then you broke me out and marched me into that Army camp like I belonged. Who was going to question Captain America? You marched back a whole lot of guys that weren’t supposed to be there.”

“You were a Sergeant.”

“I wasn’t.”

“The Commandos all knew you.” 

“Yeah we had a lot of time to get to know each other. I was kept in the same cell, like I was a POW. They opened right up when they realized I was American, told me all their war stories.”

Steve’s hand is tight on the chair. He’s taking shallow breaths and trying to let Bucky talk.

Bucky looks him over. His voice is calm, “You ask around about me?”

“What?”

“At camp. Before you stormed off to find me.”

“Yeah I did. I asked the Colonel.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said,” Steve considers lying for a fleeting second, “the name sounded familiar.”

Bucky huffs a laugh, “I bet it did,” his eyes slide to the kitchen window.

“He lost a lot of men.”

Bucky meets his eyes, holding very still, “I bet he did.”

“They gave you a medal Buck.”

“They gave Gabe a medal too.”

Steve’s tone rises to indignant, “Of course they—”

Bucky cuts him off, “Of course, they did whatever Captain America said. Somebody probably forged some bullshit papers at some point.”

“What about your tags,” Steve gestures to his chest, “and you were reciting your name, rank, and number when I broke you out.”

“Zola made them,” Bucky looks down, “All the lab lackeys thought I was a POW, too. Easier that way. Guess I kind of was. A prisoner of war,” Bucky’s head tips to the side and Steve watches him, fighting down the panic in his chest and trying to keep his head calm. “The years with you and the Commandos,” Bucky nods to himself, “nothing felt as good as that. For once I could be who I really was around you. I could kill a man and—” Bucky looks up, his eyes are dark and vulnerable. He gives Steve a pointed salute.

Steve’s voice is ice cold, “You were a good soldier.”

Bucky matches his tone, “Always have been.”

Steve turns away abruptly. He walks briskly to one of the black canvas bags in the entry way and digs out his folder. He flips it open, pushing the stack of photographs on top to the side, and slides out a time-stained letter. He marches back to the kitchen while unfolding it and begins reading as soon as he rounds the corner, “Steve, you wouldn’t believe the slop they feed us out here. Worse than your—”

Bucky interrupts, picking up the thread, reciting from memory, “—mashed potatoes. Not as bad as your beef stew though. That’s a saving grace.”

Steve looks at him over the letter.

Bucky shrugs at his confused look, “Well I wrote it didn’t I? They thought letters would keep you calm better than silence,” The corner of Bucky’s lips tug up in a sad smile, “I don’t think they expected you to worry about me so much.”

“And the stories?” Steve drops the letter on the table.

“Got them all from other POWs. Or made them up. I had a lot of time to think.”

Steve looks down at the kitchen tile, chest tight and hot.

“Isn’t that pathetic? Come on Steve, you think I can’t read you like a book? You want to call me out on every lie? You want me to show you what a dancing monkey I was with a gun to my head?” Bucky’s voice is harsh, even accusatory. Steve looks at his face, “I did right by you. I went willingly. They said they’d give you the serum if I went, so I went. I wanted you to live.” Bucky collapses back in his chair, his metal shoulder thudding against the wood, “I thought I was doing the right thing.” He nods to himself, eyes dropping. His mouth presses to a thin line.

Steve is watching him too intently when Bucky looks up again to say, “I’m not proud. But I’m not gonna apologize. I did what I had to do and I’m still here. I’m doing the right thing _now_.” Bucky hits the table with a single finger, “I’m fixing it. So I’m not gonna apologize.”

Steve looks back at him. A dozen replies cross his tongue and slip away. He can’t even nod. He just turns away, walks back to his bag, and tucks the letter inside.   


* * *

 

“Your friend used to live in Russia.” 

Steve blinks, trying to parse the ambiguous code he and Maria have been using. He tries to keep his voice easy, “Oh, used to?”

“Yep, not sure where his family is now. But you can probably find his grave in Volgograd.”

“Alright, thanks. Yeah, I’d like to pay my respects.”

“Let me know when you’re back in town."

“Might be a while.” Steve hangs up.

Steve finds Natasha in the living room, curled up under a blanket, reading a book whose spine has never been cracked.

“Can you get us to Volgograd?”

Natasha nods without looking up from her book.

 

* * *

 

They turn up at Charles de Gaulle Airport with badges in Cyrillic. Natasha leads them through security with a few brisk French words to the guards. They take a back staircase onto the tarmac and bee-line straight for a dark grey cargo plane, walking in a carefully informal formation. Natasha in front with Sam behind. Bucky and Steve walk roughly side by side. 

They had discussed the pattern on the train ride into Paris.

“Sam, you stay close to me. As close as you can. Your only job is to look confident and bored.” Natasha speaks in hushed tones, “If they think we’re covering for a plant they’ll look for him at the back of the pack.”

“I can do that,” Sam nods without lifting his eyes from the seam of his pants pocket where he’s carefully ripping off a small, embroidered American flag.

“Bucky, you hang back and cover Steve. If someone approaches him directly, let him speak first. Just one or two words.” She nods at Steve and Steve nods back. He learned to say a precious few words in Russian without an accent during his SHIELD training. “Then step in for him.” Bucky nods.

Natasha walks straight into the loading bay of the plane, flicking her hair to show her badge to the nearest soldier without slowing. The three men follow her on with their eyes down. They strap in to the seats flanking the body of the plane and keep their bags between their feet.

The plane fills up with soldiers wearing Russian military uniforms. The camouflage of Sam’s trousers suddenly stands out to Steve’s eyes. It’s the wrong shape and the wrong color. A man with a clipboard approaches and Natasha answers him tersely. Sam and Steve hold the man’s eyes but Bucky keeps his head down.

Steve exhales when the plane takes off. They are silent for the entire flight.

 

* * *

 

They land at the base in Lebyazhye and keep their heads down on the way out of the plane. Bucky is stopped by the man with the clipboard as soon as they hit the tarmac. He asks Bucky a question in Russian and Bucky gives a reply that’s nearly a growl. The man nods and Bucky walks on.

Natasha leads them onto a rusting bus which drops them off at a rusting train station. Only in the relative privacy of the train platform can Steve feel the others begin to breathe easier. An eastbound train arrives and everyone but their group of four boards it. When the train leaves the station, Bucky walks to the end of the platform and ducks around the corner of the station building. Steve can hear him vomiting into the overgrown weeds.

“Can you try asking him how he’s feeling?” Steve murmurs to Natasha.

“I already have. He says he’s fine.”

“What do you think?”

“I think he’s in a lot of pain.”

Steve sighs. He rubs his eyes with gloved fingertips. They’re all wearing gloves so Bucky’s won’t stand out. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Nothing you can do if he doesn’t let you in.” Natasha lets the silence settle before asking, “What do you have on this guy?”

“Yeshevsky?”

“Yeah.”

“A name and a city where he used to be.”

Natasha keeps her eyes straight ahead and her voice low, “What did he do?”

“Scientist. I think he made Bucky’s arm.”

Natasha nods in reply, “So what do you want to know?”

“What else he made.”

A family of birds chatters noisy from the gutter of the station building. There are metal bars over the windows. Bucky reemerges from around the corner and sits against the wall, boots flat on the ground in front of him.

“Is that all?” Natasha’s voice surprises Steve and he looks up to see her watching him. 

“What?”

“You want to know what he made.”

“And who he worked for, who worked for him. I want to know why. I want make sure the man and everything he made is— gone.”

Natasha studies his face, “That’s a lot to aim for.”

Steve studies her in turn.

“I want to help you but—” she shakes her head, brow furrowing, “We’re doing it for us now, you know? Do you want to know the past or make the past pay?”

“I want to know the past. I don’t see any other way to fix the present.”

“Whose present?”

“This present. There’s only one.”

Natasha’s eyebrows rise, “There’s not.” She folds her arms and looks down at the train tracks.

 

* * *

 

Volgograd starts to settle into Steve’s clothes as soon as they step off the train. The air smells sooty and when the wind blows there’s a metallic scent on the breeze. Natasha books a hotel room downtown and they drop their duffels in a pile on the carpet. Natasha sweeps the room for bugs, Bucky seems to be checking the room for something else, and Sam is wiping down the bathroom with a wet rag and a bottle of bleach from the corner store down the street.

Steve sits at the wooden desk and opens the compact SHIELD laptop he was supposed to destroy weeks ago. The satellite link still works. Steve makes a new email account and sends a two word email to the data drop email address he used to use for one-way communications, “Send address.”

Just under ten minutes later, there is a knock at the door. Steve heads for the door and Bucky follows him. Bucky stands just to the right of the frame, back to the wall with his gun drawn and cocked, watching Steve’s face.

Steve opens the door to a man in a neat suit.

“Mr. Greenlin, a message for you.” He hands over an envelope with a courteous smile.

Steve nods his thanks and shuts the door. The note is written in a neat script, _Burn that fucking laptop._

Bucky stays at the door with his ear pressed to the wood. Steve walks into the bedroom and hands it to Natasha, “Can you translate this for me?”

Natasha smirks, pulls a pen from her pocket, and sits down on the bed. She crosses out letters, rearranging them as she works. She does a quick equation in the margin and one letter becomes a square of four new letters. She hands the note back to Steve with a new phrase written at the bottom, _Under the tractor factory._

“Thanks.”

 

* * *

 

“Holy shit,” Sam yelps from the bathroom. 

Bucky is the first one on his feet, “What happened?”

“We could boil potatoes with the hot water coming out of this tap.”

“Wow, what does that even mean?” Bucky reaches the bathroom doorway and leans in. Steve watches them in the hall mirror’s reflection.

“It means it’s really fucking hot.”

“Why potatoes though? Do you need particularly hot water for potatoes?” Steam is billowing up from the sink, where the tap is still running, and filling the room.

“Man,” Sam huffs and turns to look over his shoulder at Bucky, “Did people not make jokes in the 40s? What’s with you guys?”

Bucky chuckles, “Sure we made jokes. They just made sense.”

“Potatoes was the first thing I thought of!” Sam’s expression is somewhere between exasperated and amused.

“Well maybe you should’ve thought a little longer—” Bucky’s eyebrow quirks up and he grins.

Sam dips his fingers under the faucet and flicks the water at Bucky. Bucky yelps and shakes it off his arm.

“I told you!” Sam bellows. 

“That is really fucking hot.”

“What did I tell you?!” He flicks another spray of water at Bucky, “This is burning me too but it’s worth it.”

Bucky dips his left hand under the water and flicks drops of his own back at Sam. Sam squawks and covers his face. Bucky reaches over and touches Sam’s arm with scalding metal fingers. Sam bellows and shoves him. Bucky swats back and their undignified sounds and half-hearted grappling wash with sounds of breathless laughter. 

 

* * *

 

The tractor factory is at the north edge of town. They travel to the south gate at midnight and Natasha leads them through the complex. She slips in and out of locked buildings, reporting back to Steve, “Raw material storage,” “Welding equipment,” “Packing and shipping.” They arrive in front of a windowless building. Natasha translates the plaque next to the door, “Military technology.”

Steve pulls the group to cover a few yards away. “Bucky, can you find a way in?” We’ll wait here.”

Bucky gives him a long look, glances briefly at Natasha, and nods. He disappears into the shadows.

“I doubt there’s anything here,” Natasha whispers, “Most underground operations moved further west in the 90s.”

Steve nods in acknowledgement. He checks the ammunition in the gun holstered to his hip.

Bucky returns quickly. “There’s a way in, but there’s a live deal going on in there.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Weapons. Can’t tell what. They’re unpacking a shipping container and palletizing them. Way too many men with guns for it to be military ops.”

“If the weapons are here then the decision makers are not,” Natasha shakes her head and looks at Steve, “Go back to the hotel, I’ve got this.”

“We’ll wait at the south gate.”

“No,” Natasha’s eyes are sharp, “You’ll wait at the hotel.”

Steve nods.

 


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

  
_The asset has a code. Men without a code are weak-minded and indecisive. When implementing the code, the asset uses judgement and is sensitive to circumstance._   
  


* * *

 

Steve dips two fingers under his uniform collar when they’re a couple of blocks from the hotel. His fingertips brush a broken twig and he tries to pull it free. The fabric behind his neck tugs uncomfortably so Steve releases the twig and feels for the point where the fabric is snagged. A thorn has pierced the inside of his suit. He pushes and pulls, trying to dislodge it one handed. 

Steve bites his lip in concentration. He stops walking. Sam and Bucky stop as well, looking over at him. Steve nudges the thorn back through the fabric and pulls the twig loose. He drops it on the asphalt and starts walking again.

 

* * *

 

Natasha comes in through the hotel window at four in the morning. 

Steve is sitting at the desk with the lights off and a pistol in his lap. She nods and he nods back.  

“Tomorrow at the docks. They think we’re buying so we need to bring a lot of cash. Yeshevsky’s lab isn’t here anymore but his distribution network still is.”

“What are we supposedly buying?”

“We don’t know.”

“That seems bad.”

Natasha cocks her head, “They don’t know either. That’s how it works. Buyers never know what’s in the crates.”

“Oh.”

Natasha pats him lightly on the shoulder as she walks toward the bathroom, “Don’t worry Cap, you’ll know all about the black market by the time we’re done here.”

“Great.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky and Natasha go “shopping” for new clothes. They’ll be on the ground, Steve will take the sniper’s post, and Sam will be air support. Bucky is wearing Russian military combat-issue trousers with scuffed boots. He pulls his fingers through his hair to work out the knots and pulls the hair tie into place. He looks largely the same as he did before, but Natasha is barely recognizable. She’s wearing tight pants, cropped at the ankles, and black stilettos. She has on a low cut black sweater that reveals a pale chest. Steve watches her tuck slim knives into the seams right before they leave the hotel.

Natasha moves to open the door and pauses. She looks up at Bucky and asks a question in Russian. Bucky shrugs. She puts her hands on her hips, thumbs resting on her hipbones and asks something else. Bucky points to her left hip and answers her. His voice is lower when he’s speaking Russian. She nods and opens the door.

Bucky turns to him in the elevator, “Steve,” he waits for Steve to meet his eyes, “You cannot fire before my signal.”

Steve nods but Bucky pushes him, “I’m serious. No hero bullshit. You do not fire before I signal you, and you will fire when I do.” 

“I understand,” Steve’s shoulders are stiff.

Bucky turns back to face the elevator doors.

Steve looks at Natasha, “You’ll get out of there as soon as you get an origin port, right?”

Natasha nods with her eyes straight ahead.

 

* * *

 

Steve watches through the scope of a sniper rifle from a crack between the corrugated steel sheets that make up the roof.  

Natasha enters through the main doors, swaying a little in her heels. Bucky enters right behind her and drops back a couple of steps once inside.

There are three men standing amongst the crates. The shortest, a man dressed similarly to Bucky, steps forward and greets her. She gives him a wry smile and greets him loudly in Russian. She starts asking rapid fire questions. Steve has heard her speak Russian before but her voice sounds different now. It’s gravely like she smokes and it pitches too high at the end of questions, making her seem impatient. 

Bucky stands with an AK-47 in a pose that’s more threatening than practical, with one hand resting on top of the gun’s muzzle. He settles his weight in his hip and his head movement is off. He’s not scanning the room. He looks bored. 

Natasha gets the man in black smiling. They lean against one of the crates. She touches his arm when she talks and laughs when he tells a joke. She leans forward like she’s doubling up with laughter and the man in black looks right down her shirt. Steve rolls his shoulders; the back of his neck is hot.

Bucky wanders over to the nearest guard. He says something in a voice too low to carry. The guard nods and pulls a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. He hands Bucky one, who produces a lighter from a pocket in his jacket. Bucky tosses him his lighter and the guard lights a cigarette of his own. It’s not long before the other guard drifts over to join their conversation. 

Bucky lets his rifle settle in its shoulder strap so the muzzle is pointed down. At one point he gestures at Natasha and rolls his eyes. Steve keeps an eye on the guards and Bucky, but trains his gun’s sights on the man next to Natasha. Steve’s attention drifts while he waits for something to happen. The cut on his shoulder has healed but he hasn’t patched his jacket yet. The night air whispers inside on the breeze and the cold air makes it feel like he’s still healing. 

Natasha has been edging closer and lowering her voice. She’s practically whispering when she touches the man’s chest. The man’s head jerks back. He replies, voice cold. She recoils as well, looking surprised, shaking her head. He steps into her space and she takes a step back. Bucky stays still, watching disinterestedly. The man in black reaches for Natasha and she nearly trips trying to pull away from him, her eyes are wide. He catches hold of her arm and pulls her into his chest. Steve’s eyes cut back to Bucky. He’s standing with a pistol in his hand, aiming at the man’s head. Both of the guards are dead at his feet. 

Bucky closes the space between them with three steps. He speaks while he walks; it sounds like three quick commands. The man in black has a gun to Natasha’s head and she’s straining away from it. Steve can see her mascara streaking down her face. She’s pleading through the tears, begging for her life. Steve doesn’t need to speak the language to recognize the sound.

Bucky gestures with his gun from the man to Natasha. The man in black shakes his head. He backs up as Bucky gets closer and runs into a crate. Bucky doesn’t slow down. As soon as he reaches them, he rips Natasha out of the man’s hands and throws her to the ground. He twists the man’s gun away from him and drops it, then grips him by the throat and lifts him straight off the floor. The man pulls at Bucky’s hand with both arms. Bucky yells the same question at him three times. He chokes out words until he can only managed choked sounds.

He throws the man toward Natasha with a disgusted sound and starts trying to pry the crate open.

Natasha gestures for the man to come closer with panicked, flighty hands. She crawls over to where his gun lies on the floor and picks it up exactly when Bucky rounds on her. He rips the gun from her hands and points it back at her. The muzzle drifts between her and the man in black as he barks questions and gets nothing but whimpers or frantic nods from Natasha. Natasha is kneeling right next to the man in black and Steve can’t get a clear picture of his head in his scope. Bucky kneels and wedges the barrel of the gun under the man’s jaw. Natasha pulls on Bucky’s arm, pleading and shaking her head. Her voice is nearly hoarse. The man in black finally speaks, saying something, pausing, and repeating himself. Bucky pulls back and aims the gun at Natasha. She makes a terrified sound and starts scrambling backward. A line of sight emerges between them.

Bucky gives Steve the signal. Steve takes the shot. The body in black lies crumpled in front of the crate. 

Bucky and Natasha start sprinting for the door the second the bullet finds its target. Steve hears the quiet whoosh of Sam’s wings through the air as he scoops them off the ground. He packs up the sniper rifle and waits for Sam to come back for him.

 

* * *

 

“So we have a port?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did we kill him?”

The muscles of Bucky’s jaw flex, “Because he saw our faces.”

“That’s not a good enough reason for me.”

Bucky snorts derisively. He turns sharp eyes on Steve, “You want to know what was in that crate?”

Steve says nothing.

“A man with a bomb stitched into his chest. They don’t move weapons, they move people that have become weapons,” Bucky gestures with his left arm.

Steve looks down and speaks to Natasha, “I thought you said they didn’t know.”

Bucky continues, before Natasha can reply, “So you a killed a man who was complicit in that. Do you feel better now?” Bucky’s chin is tucked like he’s ready for a fight, “He was evil. Does that help?” Bucky’s lip is curled and Steve can see his teeth. 

Steve rounds on him, snarling back, “Why didn’t you just kill him yourself then?”

Bucky’s eyes drop from angry to cold in a second, “You don’t kill a man with his own gun without a good reason.”

Steve turns away, ending the conversation with a cold shoulder. He asks Natasha directly, “Is that true? Was there a man in that crate?”

“That’s what he said.”

Steve feels off balance, “We should go back for him.”

“He’s already dead,” Bucky says from behind him.

“What?”

“He’s as good as dead.”

Steve looks at Natasha, her face is neutral, “That’s what Yeshevsky made. What his lab still makes.”

 

* * *

 

Steve doesn’t learn where they’re going until Natasha points it out on a map at a grocery store. Oymyakon. 

“Okay so, it’s not a port at all and practically on the other side of Russia.”

“Yes,” Natasha tucks the map back into the display and picks up her shopping basket. They’re buying a week’s worth of food from three different stores, “And we don’t know exactly where it is. He said we’d know it when we saw it.”

Steve picks up a bag of almonds and drops it in the basket.

 

* * *

 

They get tickets for a domestic flight with forged IDs. Bucky has switched back to his combat uniform with his SHIELD coat on top. He gave Steve his Russian military pants and Sam his leather jacket. 

Bucky and Natasha spend over an hour repacking the black duffel bags. All of their weapons lie in a dissembled pile on the hotel bed. They talk quietly in Russian while they wrap the weapon parts in clothes and tuck them into the bags.

Steve leans on the door frame, “The bags are designed to be x-rayed. There’s a false image stitched into the lining. It just looks like it’s full of clothes and shampoo bottles on the screen.”

Natasha gives him an amused smile, “I know. They’re a little too heavy to match up with those images. This is just if they decide to inspect them and manage to get inside.” She clicks miniature titanium padlocks through the zippers.

Steve keeps his head down and shoulders hunched at the airport, so he won’t look quite so tall. Bucky tips his chin back, looking down through lidded eyes. He’s short with the counter agent and grunts in reply to the security officer’s questions. When they make it to their gate, a group of men in military dress give him a nod. He nods back.

The flight is long and cramped. Bucky sleeps the entire time. It’s the longest Steve has seen him sleep since they found him in Romania. 

In Yakutsk, Steve hot-wires a muddy truck in the long-term parking lot with a full tank of gas. 

 

* * *

 

“A ferry will come in the morning,” Natasha opens the back door and steps out onto the gravel. A full day of driving and the road has dead ended into a river about halfway from Yakutsk to Oymyakon.

“Have you been out here before?” Steve opens the driver’s door to follow her out.

Natasha just gestures back to the tree line a hundred yards back, “Can you get some wood?”

Steve nods and heads for the trees. He slows when he enters the forest and hears footsteps behind him. Steve turns to see Bucky following him with his head down.

“Did Natasha send you too?”

“No." 

Steve grabs a fallen branch and drags it a few feet past the edge of the forest. Bucky does the same, gathering twigs and careful handfuls of dry leaves for kindling.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

The crunch of boots over wood and mud and grass fills the silence.

When they start walking back toward the truck, Bucky adds, “It helps. To sit still.”

“We can do more of that, if you need to. Just say so.”

“Yeah, I know.”

 

* * *

 

The ferry comes shortly after dawn, when they’re sitting in the truck bed with their coats zipped up, eating meal replacement bars and oranges.

They drive onto the flat ferry platform, wedging between two box trucks. They stay in the truck while it chugs across the river. Steve glances in the rearview mirror to see Bucky asleep with his head against the window.

 

* * *

 

The road was rough before the ferry, but in the final stretch to Yakutsk it becomes nearly impassable. Deep muddy ruts have Steve driving off the road, through shrubby grass and around fallen logs.

“They call this the Road of Bones,” Natasha says from the back seat, “They buried the bodies of the gulag laborers who died building it under the road.”

“The locals still hunt for bones,” Steve looks up to see Bucky in the mirror. His head is resting back against the seat and his eyes are closed, “Pelvic bones are lucky. They’ll make you rich.”

Natasha huffs a quiet laugh.

 

* * *

 

They’re less than an hour from Oymyakon when the sun sets. Steve carries on in the dark, driving slow to give the hazy headlights time to illuminate the ground. Steve reacts instantly when a Lada comes flying over a hill in the wrong lane but the truck is not nimble, front wheels turning, back wheels skidding. There’s a crunch as the cars connect, sitting sideways in the road.

Bucky speaks immediately, “Stay here.” He’s out the door before anyone can argue. Steve can hear the gravel crunching under his boots as he walks toward the other car. Steve sees the axe in Bucky’s hand exactly when the other car’s driver door opens. He lunges to open his door and is ripped backward by Natasha’s tight hand on his shoulder.

“Stay,” she hisses, “He’s fine.”

The other driver gets out of his car, lit up from the waist down by Steve’s headlights. He’s holding a baseball bat. Bucky keeps his metal hand in his coat pocket. He gestures from the truck to the man’s car with his axe and says something in Russian.

“Where did that come from?” Steve asks, trying to keep his lips still.

“It was in the backseat,” Natasha sounds calm, even impatient.

Bucky and the other driver talk for a minute. Bucky does most of the talking and the other man gives short answers and makes angry gestures. Eventually, the man steps back into his car and Bucky shuts his door for him. He lifts the car’s back tire out of a muddy ditch like it weighs nothing, walks back to the truck, and gets inside. Steve waits for the Lada to pull away before driving off.

 

* * *

 

They sleep in the truck and make oatmeal on their kerosene stove in the morning.

“You know what?” Sam looks up like he’s had a realization.

“What?” There’s already a smile curling around Natasha’s lips.

“This is the best damn oatmeal I’ve ever had.”

Natasha laughs into her cup.

“That joke is so tired it’s come full circle,” Bucky makes a circle in the air with a gloved finger, “and now it’s hilarious again.” His voice is dry with subtle sarcasm.

“That’s my specialty man. You don’t know if a joke’s any good till it’s been around the block once or twice.”

Bucky nods, his eyes are easy and he’s smiling in spite of himself.

“Can it stand the test of time, is what I’m saying.”

“Like oatmeal for breakfast,” Natasha adds quietly.

“Exactly!” Sam exclaims, raising his arms, “That’s what I’m saying!”

Bucky rolls his eyes and smiles into his cup of oatmeal.

 

* * *

 

“That’s it?”

Natasha nods and shrugs her shoulders, “We’re in the middle of nowhere. Who do they need to hide from?”

“I don’t know, aerial recon planes?”

“We just use satellites now. And this place wouldn’t warrant a second glance.”

They’re parked at the top of a hill, on one side lies Oymyakon’s valley, and on the other sits a single aluminum frame building with a half-mile long gravel driveway.

“It must be entirely underground,” Steve surveys the perimeter through a tiny pair of binoculars from Natasha’s bag, “Won’t be easy to get in.”

They spend the day watching trucks creep back and forth along the gravel road. Steve marks the arrival and departure times of three black cars and takes a long look at the people getting in and out of them through the binoculars. After spending the day in the truck, they spend the night in the truck.

“I’m going to stretch my legs,” Natasha says to the car as she steps out.

Bucky stretches out across the backseat as soon as the door closes. Steve is restless. He looks in the rearview mirror and starts talking before he’s found Bucky’s eyes, “Maybe they chose you because they knew something I didn’t.” Bucky meets his gaze, “Hydra knows more about the serum than I do. Maybe they knew I was frozen and waiting. That it was just a matter of time.”

Bucky looks away, out the side window. The moonlight falls over his face in a diagonal strip. “They didn’t know.”

“How can you be sure?”

Bucky lifts his hands and drops them in his lap, “Come on Steve. No one knew. Don’t you think they would have dug you out themselves? If someone was holding some last, desperate hope that you were alive, it was me.”

Steve’s voice is colder than he wants it to be, “I thought I didn’t mean shit to you.”

“I never said that.”

Steve looks at Sam in the passenger seat. He’s looking straight ahead like he’s alone in the car, so Steve continues, looking in the rearview at Bucky’s profile, “Why would they make me sick if they were going to give me the serum?”

Bucky’s eyes are closed. Steve watches his shoulders fall as he exhales, “To make sure you knew you owed the world.”

 

* * *

 

They drop off Bucky and Natasha about three miles away from the bunker.

“We’ll hitch a ride and get to know these guys,” Natasha slips a pistol into a holster inside her coat. 

Bucky says nothing and coils a thin wire around his metal wrist. He loops the end of it over his thumb and pulls down his coat sleeve.

Steve and Sam drive into the village with three hours to kill before they’re due to pick up Bucky and Natasha in the same spot.

“He seems to be doing better.”

“He said sitting still helps.”

“Oh yeah?” Sam turns to look at Steve’s face.

“Yeah.”

Steve’s coat is thrown across the backseat. The air warms considerably in the middle of the day.

“I’m worried about him out here. It would take hours for Maria to get someone here, even in an emergency.”

Sam hums and looks back at the windshield. After a moment, he asks, “How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

Sam nods to himself, “Yeah you seem fine.”

Steve exhales, frustrated with himself, “Sorry, I don’t mean to be—”

“Don’t apologize. Just seems like you have a lot of questions for him.”

Steve takes his eyes off the road to look at Sam, “Yeah, I guess I’m just— trying to understand.”

“You’re looking for holes.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees without hesitation.

He pulls off the side of the road thirty yards from the town’s only store. Steve gets out of the car and Sam waits inside. He buys a cooler full of reindeer meat with as few words as he can manage and pays with folded rubles.

Steve picks up the thread as he slides back into the driver’s seat, “I don’t know how else to get him out of there. When you think the world’s against you, nothing can change your mind.” 

“Not even a friend with good intentions.”

Steve glances over at Sam and starts the truck, “Yeah.” He pulls onto the road with a lurching U-turn, “He has to see it for himself.”

 

* * *

 

“Bazhanov.”

“He’s running this place?” Steve takes the coat Natasha hands him.

“Yes. Every door has a bio-lock. The only way to guarantee we can get all the way to the bottom is to take him with us.” Natasha splashes water onto her hand and wipes the dirt from her face.

“You’re saying we need to kill him.”

“Yes,” Natasha shakes her hand through her hair and a dark dust falls loose.

It’s obvious that Bucky is going to do it. He’s already re-assembling the sniper rifle resting in pieces in one of the duffels.

“I’m coming with you.”

Bucky looks up at him and his hands continue to load the gun.

“I’ll drive you there.”

Bucky says nothing.

 

* * *

 

Bazhanov’s house isn’t far from the lab. It looks exactly like the rest of the hunkered down dwellings on the periphery of the village.

“I’m sure the real thing is underground.” 

Bucky nods once in reply. He opens the car door and Steve follows him out. Bucky looks back over his shoulder.

“I’m coming with you.”

Bucky turns to look at him directly. The corners of his mouth are pulling down into something tired and miserable. He turns back around and keeps walking. Steve follows him to the back door of the house. Bucky listens through the door for a long time. The cold night air sinks its teeth under Steve’s coat collar. It trickles down his shoulders and makes the warm pocket around his chest feel chill. Steve keeps his feet still so they don’t crunch in the dry grass.

When Bucky finally moves, he doesn’t waste time.

Steve realizes Bucky is holding the axe he found in the car a half-second before it connects with the lock on the door. Bucky kicks the door open and runs into the dim house. He swipes his arm over a row of picture frames, sending them clattering and shattering into a pile of glass on the floor. He crouches behind a wall and waits. A few seconds pass and a trap door in the floor pushes open. Bright electrical light illuminates the house from the hole. A man emerges in sweatpants and an old t-shirt. He’s holding a gun with both hands. He looks right and left, sees the open back door, and calls out in Russian.

Bucky stands up and swings in a rush. The axe connects with a dull thunk to the man’s head. The body hits the floor. Bucky lets go of the axe handle and it stays upright where it’s wedged between bone and gore. Bucky digs through the man’s pant pockets and slips his wallet into his jacket. He cuts off the man’s ring finger with a quick pull of a knife. He pockets the wedding ring and slips the finger into a clear vial from his jacket pocket. He caps it with a metal cork. After he screws it into place, a light on the top glows green. He stands, tucking the vial away, and quickly ransacks the apartment, upending furniture, scattering piles of clothes, ripping open cabinets.  

Bucky looks over the room, eyes sharp and cold, and stops in front of the body once more. He kneels and opens the man’s mouth. There’s already blood pooling inside; Steve looks away. He inhales, eyes on the open back door, and looks back in time to see Bucky pocketing three bloody teeth with gold crowns. 

It’s not until they’re back in the car that Steve realizes Bucky didn’t even bring his rifle into the house. 

Steve drives for a few minutes in silence. He waits until Bucky closes his eyes to speak, “I understand. If you want to make it look like a robbery, it’s best to just rob the place.”

“You’d never do it.”

“Natasha would.”

“And you’d look the other way.”

Steve swallows, “War is messy. I don’t hold it against you.”

“This isn’t war,” Bucky opens his eyes, “War is black and white. You have orders. It’s everything else that’s messy.”

Steve looks down at the blood drying on Bucky’s gloves and back at the road.

“I was gonna be a lab rat. They had plans. I would have died in Austria if not for you. I could have just died.” Bucky swallows, eyes closing again, “Then they found me in the snow and you died instead. And I was tired of fighting them. Zola started talking like I was an asset.” Steve steals a glance at Bucky’s face. He’s sweating, “I let them—”

Bucky turns to look at him and Steve looks back. Bucky’s eyes are bright with a sickly intensity, “You still can’t answer my question. So I’ll just tell you.”

Bucky coughs into his fist, “They picked me because I was already a weapon. You know how many deaths I faked before we ever went to war? You know how many people I killed in Brooklyn alleys? I don’t even know, Steve.” Bucky coughs again. He cuts it off half way out of his mouth and holds his breath through a grimace.

“That’s why I was worth keeping around. They wanted me to be a killer but I made myself a monster. I was too good,” Bucky’s gripping the gearshift with a shaky hand.

Steve pulls off the side of the road.

Bucky rips his door open before the truck has stopped. He hits the ground hard, landing on his knees.

“I made threats disappear. I protected you.” Steve can hear him yelling, panting around the words as he gets out of the car and runs around to Bucky’s side, “I did the right thing. You can’t just— you can’t fucking— look the other way.”

Bucky heaves and a mix of blood and bile spatters on the gravel. Steve feels the flurries landing on his cheeks before he sees them. He didn’t realize it was cold enough to snow. He kneels next to Bucky, and quickly stands again. He runs to the back of the truck and grabs a bottle of water. He crushes the plastic between his hands to break the ice that’s formed around the top.

Steve lands hard on his knees when he reaches Bucky’s side of the truck. He unscrews the cap and hands it to him. Bucky fills his mouth with water and spits it out again, metal hand resting on his knee. He curls forward and lets his head hang.

“I don’t hold it against you,” Steve’s steady voice cuts through the freezing air. The snow muffles it slightly, “If you want to put all this behind us, then I do too.”

Steve waits, holding the cap of the water bottle and looking at the hair hanging in front of Bucky’s face. Bucky spits red twice more, downs the rest of the water, and gets back in the truck.

 


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

 

_The asset is constantly assessing his next move. He lives in the present moment only, where either death or victory may lie around the next corner._

 

* * *

 

“Is he telling the truth?” Steve slides into the passenger seat and pulls the door closed while she’s using the rearview mirror to fix her hair in the dawn’s light. 

Natasha looks over at him, “What do you think that means?”

“You’re a better judge of when someone’s lying than I am.” 

Natasha looks right at Steve face, “He believes every word he says.”

“Do you believe it?” The words are out of Steve’s mouth before he can stop them. He holds her eyes.

“I don’t believe in stories,” Natasha returns to attention to tying her hair back, “They’re a distraction. I believe in people.” She slips a hair tie into place and pulls another, thicker band on top of it, “Of all the things people rely on, memory is the easiest to fuck with.”

 

* * *

 

They walk a quarter mile into the woods before building a fire. Breakfast is smashed protein bars, fire-roasted reindeer meat, and the last of the oranges. 

Steve crouches next to Sam in the dirt. He sits close enough that the wing pack on Sam’s back bumps his shoulder when Sam shifts.

“So you’ll get us in, then we find an elevator and take it all the way down.”

“Yes,” Natasha spits a bit of orange pith into the peel in her hand, “The vial keeps the tissue alive. So put the sample back in immediately after you use it.”

Two hours later, Natasha hijacks a supply truck and puts on the driver’s uniform. Steve and Sam  sit in the back with the unconscious driver. They get all the way to the road in front of the lab’s driveway before Steve hears urgent Russian coming from the cab. The truck drives past the lab and into the woods. 

The engine switches off and Bucky swings open the rear doors a second later, “We got the wrong guy.”

“That wasn’t Bazhanov?”

“It was, but he doesn’t matter. We need his wife.”

“How do you know?”

“Because their car is out front and the lab is still operational. You find your husband dead on the floor with an axe in his head and the first place you go is his office?”

Steve nods grimly. He jumps out the back of the supply truck and starts running toward their truck hidden in the trees a few hundred yards away.

Bucky follows him, sprinting past Steve to reach the driver’s side first. He starts the engine and throws it in gear. Steve slams his door closed as Bucky floors the gas. The tires spin against the muddy grass and send them lurching out toward the road.

“How are we going to get her out of there?”

“Natasha is making a call.”

“What kind of call?”

“The kind no mother can ignore.”

Steve feels his heart drop, “She’s a mother.” He regrets the words as soon as he says them.

“They all are. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters,” Bucky’s voice is blunt, “You can’t care about them if you’re going to kill them.”

Sure enough, the same old sedan that was parked next to the house last night is racing up thelab’s gravel drive as soon as it comes into sight. Bucky eases off the gas so she’ll turn onto the road ahead of him.

He falls back to a comfortable following distance. Steve can see the outline of her hair through the rear window. A mother racing to her child. Bucky floors the gas again and rear-ends the car in a crumple of metal and plastic. The airbags don’t deploy and Steve sees her head hit the steering wheel. The truck’s engine is screaming from the strain. Bucky pulls the steering wheel left and then right, the truck’s top heavy frame leans to one side and then the other. The car ahead immediately starts to list to the right. Bucky turns the wheel quickly, shoving the sedan off the road. He follows her off, their bodies bouncing violently in the seats as they leave the road, and rams the driver’s side of the car against a tree trunk. The impact slams Steve against his seatbelt hard enough to leave him breathless. The truck is totaled.

Bucky rips his door off with his metal hand. He leans into the wreckage of the sedan and reemerges with a finger. He replaces the finger in the vial and throws Mr. Bazhanov’s missing piece in a long, high arc into the woods.

A few minutes later, the supply truck rumbles into sight. It slows just long enough for Steve and Bucky to jump through the open back doors.

“I used to know what that felt like,” Bucky leans back against the truck side. Steve nods at Sam and settles opposite Bucky.

“What what felt like?”

“Guilt.” Bucky pulls off a bloody glove and throws it on top of the limp driver, “But that’s the serum. You know how it takes everything inside and magnifies it? I used to be heartless, but now I’m made of stone.”

“Let’s not do this right now.”

“Why not now? We could die in there.” Bucky gestures toward the front of the truck, back toward the lab, “We have a few minutes. Why not now. I didn’t have the right stuff inside. Not like you.” 

Steve turns away.

“Listen. I had gaps where you had convictions. You saw what they called ‘ethical consequences’ and I saw a way to survive. The serum made you better but it made me worse. It’s no so bad for you, Steve. Look at me.”

Steve looks up. 

“That’s not so bad. It’s better than not knowing what the fuck you are for the longest time.”

“You’re right.” Steve says it to shut him up. Guilt roils in the pit of his stomach but he can’t listen any more.

The last few minutes to the lab pass in silence. The gate opens without issue and before Steve can figure out how to apologize or ask for an apology he’s swinging out the back of the truck, landing quietly on the concrete floor of the aluminum frame building. They’ve pulled inside with the other supply trucks.

Natasha stays with the truck to keep the exit clear. They’ve planned on taking no more than five minutes to get in and get out. Steve, Sam, and Bucky find the elevator and take it all the way to the bottom. It’s still early and the halls are mostly empty. They reach a fork and Bucky heads off on his own. They reach another fork and Sam and Steve part ways. 

Steve makes two turns without having to duck into a doorway to avoid someone. Suspicion blanches across his shoulder blades. Steve turns down a narrower corridor and hears Bucky’s voice, “ _Stop, please stop_ ,” a strangled scream, “ _please, please, someone please help,”_ the pleas becomes hoarse shouts. Steve races down the hall, following the voice, _“HELP ME, ANYONE, PLEA—”_ Steve kicks open a door and runs in. The doors slam shut behind him. 

He spins to see a metal panel as thick as a bank vault door slam down across the doorway. Steve turns to find himself in a room covered in smooth metal. He immediately falls to the ground and wedges the shield under the door’s seam. 

A familiar voice begins to speak, “Welcome. Captain America and the Winter Soldier, our prodigal sons come home. You will find nothing but open arms here.” He pushes down on the far edge of the shield, trying to lever the door open again. “Please remain calm, the gas will not harm you.”

A quiet hissing sound replaces the voice. Steve quickly draws a deep breath and holds it. He stands and starts banging his shield against the metal walls at twelve inch intervals. He stops when he hears a hollow ring. Steve leans in, squinting his eyes against the gas’ burn, and finds the panel’s faint seams. He slams the edge of the shield against the seam and the panel buckles. He slams into again and a small gap appears. Steve is lightheaded from lack of oxygen. He wedges his shield into the gap and rips off the panel. 

A gas mask looks back at him through a mess of wires. A muffled voice says, “Rogers hold still, I swear to god,” right before a larger panel falls forward, knocking into Steve’s leg on its way down. A small gloved hand grabs the collar of his uniform and pulls him straight through the tangle of wires. Steve trips into the space beyond the metal cage and gasps a breath. The small hand keeps pulling him through a narrow, dark space. Steve feels pain in his leg and looks down to see a shallow gash from his hip to his knee.

Steve recognizes the red hair under the mask long before she pulls it off.

“Nat,” Steve gasps another breath, “We have to go back for Bucky.” 

“He’s fine. He’s already got the box.”

Steve curses under his breath.

“That was an old recording,” Natasha says as she pulls open a small elevator shaft access door, “Can you fit through here?”

“Yeah.”

They slip through the door and drop twenty feet to the top of the elevator car. Natasha knocks three times on the box’s ceiling and it starts to rise. She sets the steel cutting device on top of the elevator car and it whirrs forward. She waits for it to cut a two foot line then resets it at the same starting point, rotated 90 degrees. When she switches the device off, four metal fingers curl around the joint of the sliced L and peel the roof back. Steve and Natasha drop into the car just before it reaches the top floor. 

“How did you know I was—?” Steve manages to ask just before the doors open.

Natasha just holds a finger to her ear as the deafening klaxon blasts in through the elevator doors, giving the obvious answer. There’s a strange pause where Steve can see people dressed in combat black running back and forth, shouting orders, and none of them seem to have noticed the open elevator. Bucky pushes a metal box into Steve’s hands and slips out the elevator doors. He provides cover fire as Steve shields Sam and Natasha during the sprint to the exit. Sam spreads his wings as soon as they crash through the exterior door, lifting Steve and Natasha off their feet. He flies them to the tree line and goes back for Bucky.

“I need to clean up that crash site.” Natasha says over her shoulder.

“Do you want help?”

“No thanks.”

Steve watches her retreating figure. He looks down at his boots in last night’s snow. Steve lifts the metal box close to his face in the grey morning light. He can’t see a lock anywhere, not even a hole for a key. He tries forcing the box open but it’s sealed tight.

 


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

  
_The asset is patient. He must be so well tuned to the parameters of the mission that waiting, planning, or observing are just as satisfying as acting. However, he is driven by an instinctive urgency and will take the shortest path forward.  
  
_

* * *

 

Steve hot-wires a van with two rows of rear seats in Oymyakon. Sam siphons gas from three cars into a plastic barrel and stuffs it in the back. They’re on the road back to Yakutsk in under an hour, driving a little faster than the van or roads can handle. 

The adrenaline wears off slowly. Sam passes around a bag of reindeer jerky. By the time the sun is slipping toward the horizon, they’re working out a sleep rotation. They’ll drive through the night to get back to Yakutsk.

Sam and Bucky take the first shift but spend most of their allotted three hours joking and throwing things at each other over the seat back. 

“You got enough blankets back there?” Sam says through a fake yawn.

Bucky snorts in reply. Their pile of blankets was lost in the shuffle between Italy and Switzerland. From what Steve can see in the rearview mirror, Bucky has his combat jacket laid over his face and chest and Sam has his jacket wrapped around his feet, one of his arms resting over his eyes.

“You know everybody thinks Afghanistan is hot, but it gets really fucking cold in the winter.”

Bucky grunts in reply.

“And you know what we used to keep warm?”

Bucky doesn’t respond.

“Boots!” Sam yells, mouth splitting open in a grin as he tosses both of his boots over the seat back. They land where Bucky’s head must be and he jerks under his coat with a pained sound.

Sam laughs and clenches his fist in the air.

“Sam, I think you gave me a bloody nose,” Steve can hear the smile in Bucky’s voice.

“Oh boo hoo. At least you’re warm now.”

“Yeah you’re right. Wish I could return the favor.”

Sam jumps to cover his head.

“But I think massage does more for circulation.”

“Massage?” Sam’s face is so utterly confused that Steve snickers from the front seat, “Man what the—”

“Yeah,” Bucky kicks the back of Sam’s seat hard, “Just something—” he picks up a rhythm, kicking so hard that Sam’s body is jerking forward with each hit, “to get the blood flowing.”

“Ah— yeah— that’s— great—” Sam winces and tries to sigh like he’s relaxed. The kicks make him choke on it and both he and Bucky crack up into laughter.

“Boys,” Natasha drawls from the driver’s seat.

“Yes mom,” Sam sasses back. They settle down and lie still.

 

* * *

 

They pull over to switch drivers. Natasha stretches her arms above her head and bends to either side as she walks to the back. Sam is sleeping deeply so Steve decides to drive instead of waking him up.

Bucky takes the passenger seat and props his boots up on the dashboard. 

“Where’s the box?” Bucky asks without looking at Steve.

Steve points at the glove box.

Bucky opens the latch with his metal hand and pulls it out. He flicks on the light over his seat and begins by sliding his metal thumb around the lid’s seam. He pauses near one of the box corners and brings the box close to his face. He tilts the box in the light and just nudges the seam edge with one of the plates in his thumb. He spends a long time picking at the edge of the lid, then pulls a knife from his boot and sets the point of the blade against the seam. He needles the knife backward and forward, working the point deeper inside. Bucky reaches for his boot and comes back with another knife. He sets the handle of the knife currently wedged in the box against his chest and starts working the second knife into a different spot. Bucky works knife after knife into the seam, pulling new blades from his pockets, until there are seven metal tips tucked into the box, each at a specific angle. He grabs two of the handles and pushes them down gently. The box lid eases open and the knives fall free into his lap.

Bucky hands the box immediately to Steve, “Count them.”

Steve takes a hand off the wheel and pulls the papers from the box. “Three.” He sets them back inside. Bucky closes the lid and puts the box back in the glove compartment.

“It doesn’t have a visible lock,” Steve murmurs.

“It’s like a magician’s box, the sides are just a little too thick, the bottom too shallow. The lock is built into the box.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Right where it was supposed to be.”

“Why do you think so many of these offices are still intact? I mean the founders of these labs are all dead, why would they—” Steve gestures next to the steering wheel and leaves the sentence unfinished. He fights the urge to look over at Bucky.

“There must be others who need to know the layout of the labs to do their jobs.”

“What if there aren’t, though. What if it’s just you? What if they’ve left it for you to find?”

“That’s a lot of trouble for one man.”

Steve chooses his words carefully, “You’re more than one man. If you’re with me, you know? They must know who you— They know you’re with me. We’re not just two men. Controlling you, or controlling me, that’s valuable. There are a lot of reasons why they might do that.”

“You think Hydra has one mind. It’s not like that. Zola’s Hydra is not like that.”

Steve does look over at him then.

“These labs, they operate in a vacuum. They go years and years without talking to each other. They’re as disconnected as they can possibly be. Zola supplied the technology and security. And that’s what caught you, right?” Bucky meets his eyes, “In Oyamyakon. Another machine?”

Steve nods.

“The way they ran their labs,” Bucky shrugs, “Zola didn’t give a shit. So why are the offices still around? Probably because the old guy locked the place up and threw away the key.”

Bucky is quiet for a minute. He runs a hand through his hair.

“They built a holding cell over the access door to Yeshevsky’s office. I had to open it up—”  he stops, shaking his head.

“What kind of cell?”

“Prison cell.”

“Was there someone in it?”

“Yeah, a bunch of someones.”

“Were they— did you have to—?”

Bucky continues his thought instead of answering the question, “Men like me.” He flexes his metal hand into a fist and the servos in his shoulder whirr quietly.

“With metal arms?”

“Or legs. Or bodies.”

“Did you—” Steve stops hard on the question. He ends up asking the exact opposite, “Are any of them still alive?”

“No.” Bucky rests his hands in his lap, “Wasn’t hard. They weren’t soldiers, just betas.”

“What’s a beta?” Steve’s throat is dry.

“A test body.” Bucky waves his arm again, “I think three or four men had this arm before me.”

Steve nods stiffly.

Bucky is watching his profile, “They kill the betas when they take the weapon off. The weapon leaves a control fingerprint on the beta’s brain. That could be valuable.”

Steve meets Bucky’s eyes. They’re calm and clear. He nods again.   
  


* * *

“Hey,” Sam’s sleepy voice from the back seat, “Why are you driving?”

“Because you’re sleeping.”

“Oh hell no. Pull over.”

Steve pulls over and switches places with Sam. He grabs the box from the glove compartment as he gets out. The air feels warmer on his skin when he steps out of the car. Steve lays across the seat and curls his legs up at the end. 

Steve tugs his flashlight out of his bag and wraps a shirt over the light’s beam. He tucks it under his chin and pulls out the first letter.

_January 27th, 1957_

_Dr. Yeshevsky,_

_Thank you for your detailed letter. If I understand correctly, your primary concern with our installation schedule is that the subject will be compromised by pain from the implant. I agree that that is a reasonable concern. The betas you sent did struggle to balance neurological tasks and were easily fatigued during our tests._

_I believe our best course of action is to proceed with an additional beta course to improve the neurological connections and mind/implant handshake. This delay is actually fortuitous as we are still iterating the serum._

_I will discuss your observations with my chief chemist and see if there is anything we might incorporate into the serum to address the subject’s pain threshold. It is a careful balance, of course, because pain is useful feedback for the body. An ideal solution may be to reroute these signals elsewhere in the brain so the subject can still process the sensation and perceive its intensity, without the distracting urgency of a pain signal._

_I believe I have previously echoed Dr. Radziewicz’s sentiments on the importance of agency and perceived free will. In that spirit, we will make every effort to find a chemical remedy and use psychological conditioning only if necessary._

_Please send word to Thompson that we will be ready for a field demonstration in mid-April._

_Sincerely,_

_Dr. Hisashi Miyashiro_

Steve sets the first letter back in the box and pulls out the other two. He shoves the box forward between the two front seats and unfolds the next letter. 

_August 3rd, 1962_

_Dr. Zola,_

_I have heard from a trusted colleague that there is unrest within Hydra. If his report is truthful, than I understand that some have voiced displeasure with my focus on weaponization. We all know SHIELD has devoted its considerable resources to an ill-fated arms race and I have no intention of supporting those efforts._

_If I may, I’d like to record a few words in support of my program. As you have wisely assessed in the past, Hydra is ideally suited to this tumultuous political climate. We wield the power and bear none of the tiresome responsibility to explain ourselves. We already have an asset in the field and soon even the strongest nations will feel the Earth shake with Hydra’s power. I am speaking of the Camelot Initiative, of course, which we expect to reach completion within the year._

_Have my critics return to me in a year’s time and state again that my conscientious weapons program is not the fist of Hydra. Furthermore, I do not question the value of my peers’ work, but none are without fault. What is the value of a man with a will of steel if he bleeds as freely as the next? Does a superior mind not need a superior vehicle? Is the value of a human asset raised in Hydra’s image not magnified ten-fold by an effective exoskeleton?_

_As more of our creations are introduced into the field, time will prove that a strong weapons development program is the necessary protective shield around our genius._

_Finally, the General has expressed, once again, his pleasure with the results we have delivered and impressed upon me his great interest in gathering all of Hydra under the Red Army’s wing. Though our current arrangement affords us a peaceful anonymity, I’m sure I need not remind you that we may find ourselves on the losing side of this war if we do not establish allies on both sides. In lieu of full cooperation, the General has offered political protection if we agree to house and manage a few nuclear weapons. Soviet pockets may not be as deep, but they are rich in the loyalty of their people and skilled at stifling troublemakers. I would be more than happy to coordinate a meeting if you would like to discuss the matter with the General directly._

_Respectfully,_

_Dr. Nikita Yeshevsky_

“There’s a letter in here from Yeshevsky to Zola.”

“Weird,” Bucky’s quiet voice from the passenger’s seat, “Could be a copy? Or maybe he never sent it.”

Steve hums in reply and unfolds the last paper. It’s freshly creased and the paper is bright white.

_May 25th, 2010_

_Dr. Zola,_

_I understand Hydra is displeased and rightly so. I will explain my actions briefly in an attempt to illuminate, not excuse, their consequences. Ivan Vanko had worked with Hydra previously and demonstrated his loyalty through years of service. He was a gifted scientist, though his genius was not great enough to engineer a machine to match the Iron Man creations so quickly. It was I, and my team, who helped him assemble the arc reactor._

_In light of Senator Stern’s incompetence and the U.S. Military’s sluggishness, I sought a faster way to acquire Mr. Stark’s technology. Vanko was an incredibly motivated man. It seems the loss of his father gave him a great thirst for revenge. Trusting the mercurial nature of revenge to see a delicate job to completion was my mistake. This error of judgement led not only to a failed mission, but released some of our intellectual property to that American imbecile, Mr. Hammer._

_Vanko’s failure is another testament to the value of Dr. Miyashiro’s work. A layman with a superior weapon is no better than a soldier with a gun. The legacy of his rigorous psychological experimentation will be the foundation of Hydra’s future success. I see now that I should have waited for access to our primary asset to acquire the Iron Man suit._

_As we regroup and work to cover the consequences of Vanko’s treachery, I find myself turning to Hydra’s great history for inspiration and succor. Though Hydra’s achievements are innumerable, I often ruminate on our missed opportunities and what we might have built, had we seized them. Consider how powerful our greatest psychological success could have been if he had been weaponized. If we had only eliminated Erskine sooner, we could have delivered his charge to Dr. Radziewicz for proper training in the image of Hydra. I agree that Hydra does not need an Army, but think of what we could have done with one good man._

_Hindsight brings an unattainable clarity, but it ought to inspire us to approach new paths with an openness to tolerable risks. After all, the troubles of today are but the aftershocks of yesterday’s tragedies; we will strive to right these wrongs with increased diligence, and forge forward with open eyes._

_Heil Hydra._

_Yours Faithfully,_

_Dr. Bazhanov_

Steve drops the last letter into the box without a word. Bucky’s metal hand pulls it out with two fingers a moment later. Steve watches him read it and tuck the papers back into the box.

“They’re in the glove box when you want them,” Bucky speaks to Sam in a low voice, as if Steve is sleeping.

Sam nods.

Bucky leans back in his seat, resting his right ankle on top of his left on the dashboard, “Give them to Natasha when you’re done.”

“I will.”

 

* * *

 

**_Mission Report_ **

_Reporting Agent: Captain Rogers_

 

_Mission objective: Achieved_

_Intel acquired. No team casualties. Uncovered an underground bunker 5km from Oymyakon. Obtained required assets and evacuated._

 

_Secondary mission outcomes:_

_Soldiers in possession of experimental implanted technology neutralized._

 

_Action required (Recommend required assets):_

_Clean up of known base. Strike team recommended._

 

_Team Status (If compromised, detail condition):_

_Agent Romanov: Operational_

_Agent Wilson: Operational_

_Sergeant Barnes: Compromised_

_Barnes is a functional and valuable member of the team. He is suffering from psychological distress after a period of Hydra captivity. No further action required._

 

* * *

 

“First class, huh?” Sam waves his ticket like it’s hot.

“Yes. After Siberia? Definitely first class.” Natasha hands Bucky her bag without a word. He sets down his bag and takes the handles of both in his metal hand. He lifts them onto his shoulder.

“What are we doing in Hong Kong?” Steve looks up from his paper ticket.

“Getting supplies.”

“What kind?”

“Every kind. I had no idea SHIELD was so— fucked. We’re on our own now.”

“I’m sure Maria can help if we really need her to.”

“Yeah,” Natasha’s eyes meet his. “And until then we’re on our own.”

Steve sits next to Natasha for the flight. The flight attendants serve breakfast: sliced fruit, yogurt, pastries, microwaved eggs, and sausages. Natasha gives Steve everything but her fruit. 

 

* * *

 

“Where is he." 

Steve is enunciating into his phone, nearly yelling over the recorded voice making announcements to the airport terminal. He keeps an eye on where Sam and Bucky are standing worryingly close to the checked luggage conveyor belt. They’re laughing and Bucky keeps patting Sam on the back hard enough to make his arms fly up from his sides to keep from falling over.

Steve hears Maria’s crackly sigh over the phone line. He waits, listening to the silence.

“Are you okay, Steve?”

“I need to talk to him.”

“I need to talk to him, too. We cleared out Ola by the way. Thanks for that. One down, two to go.”

“Good.” Steve holds still, hoping for more, and breathes out when he hears the quiet click of the call disconnecting.

 

* * *

 

“Food first,” Natasha announces from the driver’s seat of their rental car. 

“Do you guys get jet lag?” Sam asks over his shoulder.

Steve looks at Bucky, who shakes his head. He replies for both of them, “No.”

“I already know you don’t get jet lag,” Sam points at Natasha and she laughs.

 

* * *

 

Natasha leads them to the front door of a restaurant. Bucky translates the sign out front as, “Lock Cha Tea House.”

She orders for the group and they drain three pots of tea while waiting for the food. It arrives in waves, plates and bamboo steamer baskets piling up on the small table.

Natasha pulls a leaf-wrapped dumpling from a steamer basket and unfolds it. Steve watches her out of the corner of his eye and copies her movements.

“So what are we eating, Nat?” Sam asks through a mouthful of food.

“Vegan dim sum.”

“Nice.”

 

* * *

 

Natasha gets a suite in a nice hotel downtown. She flashes something that looks like a government badge when she books the room.

They sleep for most of the afternoon. Sam and Natasha take the bed, Bucky sleeps on the fold out couch. Steve insists he’s not tired until everyone else has gone to sleep, then stretches out on the floor. When his breathing has slowed, he hears Bucky stir. 

Bucky sits up silently and pads across the carpeted floor to the bathroom. He closes the door and runs the sink faucet for at least ten minutes. The bathroom door opens again and Bucky returns to the couch. Steve watches his still form until his eyes close themselves.

He wakes up to see Bucky and Natasha standing in the suite’s kitchen. Bucky drops a few small objects into a thick plastic bag. Natasha unscrews the lid of an opaque bottle and pours in a clear fluid. Bucky asks her a question in Russian as he seals the bag and she nods. Bucky swirls the liquid in the bag for a few seconds, then carefully pours the liquid down the kitchen sink’s drain. He lifts the bag to the light and Steve sees three teeth and a wedding ring inside. 

Bucky hands Natasha the bag, then fishes in his jacket for a moment and produces Bazhanov’s wallet as well. She opens it, takes out a thick stack of bills, and hands it back.

Natasha turns to look down at Steve, speaking as if she knows he’s been watching, “Ready to go shopping?”

 

* * *

 

They set out when the night has fully settled. Natasha drops Sam and Steve in a well-lit night market and disappears down an alley with Bucky. 

“Well, I’m dying for something sweet.”

“Yeah?” Steve’s attention is elsewhere.

“Do you speak Cantonese?”

“Is that a serious question?” Steve looks at him. There are shadows under Sam’s eyes but the corners of his mouth are easy, his forehead smooth.

“Yeah.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, it is Hong Kong,” Sam shrugs, scanning the bright stalls stretching down the street, “Shouldn’t be too hard to find someone who speaks English.”

It turns out to be effortless. Most shopkeepers know enough English to tell Sam what they’re selling. Steve trails him silently. He holds his hands behind his back. Sam buys a skewer of sticky, sweet globs. He offers Steve one and he takes it. They eat silently. The air smells familiar, though Steve has never been here before.

They sit in uncomfortably small aluminum chairs and watch the crowd. Steve waits for Sam to speak. 

“Want to help me find some boots?”

“What?” Steve turns to look at him, voice faint with distraction.

“I need new boots.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah.”

Steve spends the night inside his head, trailing Sam from one shoe store to the next. He says little and checks the time on his phone often. Sam ends up with a newish pair of combat boots from an Army surplus store that seemed to cater to expats. 

Sam and Steve get back to the hotel first. They watch the BBC channel in English. Natasha and Bucky come back around one in the morning.

“It’s in Brazil.”

Steve sits straight up on the bed, “Which one?”

“Miyashiro’s. Radziewicz is impossible to find and Gohl’s lab is gone.”

Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Gone gone. It was on a barge floating in international waters. Miyashiro’s the only lead we have right now.”

“Did you,” Steve ducks to the side to look past her at Bucky, “get what you need?”

“Yeah,” Natasha smoothes one eyebrow with two fingers.

“When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow at noon.”

“Okay good,” Sam suddenly joins in from where he’s splayed on the bed, “Because my jet lag wasn’t bad enough. Wow, can’t wait.”

Steve sees a tiny smile flash across Bucky’s face.

“We’ll have our own plane,” Natasha adds.

“You talked to Maria?” Steve is standing now, feeling wide awake.

“Sort of.” Natasha lays down where Steve used to be. 

 

* * *

 

They sleep in and make it to the airport just before noon. Maria has sent a private jet that looks like it was designed to carry a politician and press corps. 

Another long flight. Even Steve’s back get stiff after sitting still for so long. When there’s nothing but Pacific blue outside the windows, Steve starts walking laps up and down the aisle. He pauses at one end, where Sam is standing, leaning against the drink service cabinets.

“Hey Sam.”

“Hey Steve. Funny seeing you here.”

“Want to see something strange?”

“How can I say no.”

Steve lifts his wrist, where a small cut from the car crash in Oymyakon has recently finished healing.

“When I get a cut,” Steve runs a light fingertip over the scab, “It scabs over. But the skin heals faster than the scab lets go.” Steve digs a fingernail under the edge of the scab and picks it off. A patch of pristine new skin lies underneath. He rubs the pad of his finger back and forth to clear off the remaining bits of dry skin. “So I can wait for the scab to fall off, or I can just pick it off. Doesn’t seem to make a difference.”

“How’d you figure that out?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Did you pick your scabs growing up?”

“No. That was a great way to get an infection.”

“But now you can. No worries. You feel like a rebel?”

“Yeah I do.” Steve nods solemnly, “You wanna do one?” 

“What are you, covered in scabs right now?”

“Pretty much.” Steve looks over his arms and finds a long scrape on his left tricep, “Try this one.”

Sam picks off the first slim scab. Steve jumps and cries out in pain. Sam jerks backward in a hurry; Steve just clutches his arm and cracks up into laughter.

“Ha ha,” Sam shakes his head, reaching for Steve’s arm again, “Yeah you real funny.” Sam picks off another small scab and says, “Feels like pulling the fire alarm.”

 

* * *

 

They land at the Boa Vista International Airport. An open-air Jeep is waiting for them on the tarmac. 

“I’m driving,” Natasha slides into the driver’s seat.

“Shotgun!” Sam races up to the Jeep to claim the other front seat. Steve and Bucky settle into the back.

They pull out of the airport and onto the highway. Bucky starts stripping off his jacket and gloves as soon as they’re on the road.

“How is it so hot? It’s supposed to be winter here,” Bucky says to no one in particular.

“Does somebody need a fan?” Sam turns around, fake concern in his voice.

“Shut up,” Bucky lets his head fall back against the seat.

“You know they have these electric ones now. You just hold a button and they spin,” Sam twirls his finger in a little circle, “Some will even mist you with water.”

“Oh god, shut up.” Bucky puts a hand over his eyes.

“For all the people that go to Disney World in August like they have no idea it gets hot in Florida.”

Bucky throws his coat forward at Sam, “You know I have a metal arm, right? It’s made of metal.”

“We could fry an egg on it if that’d make you feel better.”

“Just get me my fucking skin sleeve.”

Sam cracks up at that, throwing his head back to laugh into the whipping wind. He laughs for so long that Bucky starts to smile, then chuckle. Sam throws his coat back at him and Bucky catches it one handed.

 

* * *

 

The city gives way to the jungle. After three hours on the road, Bucky leans forward, “I know this. We’re getting close. Take the next left.”

A little under half a mile later, Natasha pulls off the highway and down an unpaved access road.

“Stop at the end.” Bucky is scanning the trees above them.

Natasha pulls to the end of the road and parks the truck.

“We need to bring everything. We can’t come back here,” Bucky lifts his own bag and Natasha’s. Steve takes his and Sam’s.

Bucky crouches and draws a diagram in the dirt with his finger. “The lab is in the center of the testing ground,” He draws a dot with a circle around it, “There are at least four guard towers and cameras covering almost every inch of the forest.” Bucky draws a four small x’s in the circle, “The cameras are unmonitored unless you trip a sensor. There are too many animals out here for motion sensors so they’re triggered by weight. Step _exactly_ where I step. Stop when I stop. Keep your eyes on the ground and your hand on your gun.”

“How many times have you been here?” Steve asks quietly.

“Hundreds,” Bucky shrugs, “Thousands.” He stands up, “But the last time was twelve years ago.”

Bucky winds them into the forest. Sam walks directly behind, them Natasha, then Steve. Sam follows Bucky’s footsteps, Natasha follows Sam’s, and Steve follows Natasha’s. Bucky picks up a long branch somewhere along the way and brushes aside undergrowth to see what’s underneath. They scale a few trees to get around problem areas. Once, Bucky spends at least three minutes staring at a patch of ground before stepping on it. No one speaks. Hours pass and Steve falls into an automatic rhythm. He watches Natasha’s feet with his hand on the pistol at his hip.

Bucky stops and the rest stop immediately behind him. He points up and they look skyward to see a well fortified guard post perched in a tree. There’s is no obvious way to climb the tree’s smooth trunk so Bucky scales it with his metal hand ripping holds in the bark as he goes. He reaches the top, picks the lock on the back door with a thin knife, and pushes the door inward. Bucky disappears into the shadow. A moment later a rope ladder comes tumbling out of the doorway.

The post is not meant to hold more than two people. They arrange themselves with legs overlapping on the crowded floor.

Bucky points up at the array of screens covering the interior walls, “They monitor the tests from here,” Some show forest but most show interior shots of a well-lit building. He points to the closet taking up a quarter of the small space, “and adjust as needed. There’s no one here because there’s no live test going on.” 

Steve listens but his eyes are on the screens. 

“They monitor the entire facility because there are no limits on where you can go during a test.” 

Steve’s eyes have settled on a three-by-three grid of camera feeds that seem to show holding cells.

“And no limits on how you pass it.”

There’s a man with long hair ripping up the concrete floor of his cell one handful at a time. In another cell, a woman sits on the floor, assembling and disassembling weapons at inhuman speeds. 

“You did tests here?” Steve asks hollowly. He can’t stop watching the screens. There’s a slight boy with short hair doing push ups in the corner of his cell.

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

“Mental, physical,” Bucky’s voice is flat, unaffected, “Everything they could think of.”

Steve nods without looking away from the feeds and Bucky turns to follow his gaze. He watches the feeds for a second and adds, “This is where they gave me the serum.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky’s knowledge of the facility seems to be deeply ingrained. He spends the evening drawing detailed maps of the forest and the lab. Sam and Natasha watch over his shoulder, asking questions. 

Steve watches the feeds. At one point, a pair of guards with their faces covered come to open up a cell. The well-muscled man inside waves as they approach. He’s smiling like they’re old friends. The guards handcuff him and he laughs over his shoulder, trying to make eye contact. They lead him from the cell and comes willingly, head and shoulders moving slightly as he talks to them. He’s still smiling when he passes out of frame.

“Is it safe to stay here?” Steve asks when he can see nothing but pitch black outside the post’s narrow windows.

“Safer than staying out there.” Bucky looks up from his third attempt at drawing the lowest level of the facility’s basement. He knows there’s a long, upward slanting hallway somewhere but can’t remember where.

“I have night vision goggles,” Natasha offers, “We could keep watch from the roof.”

Bucky shakes his head, “They’d see you before you’d see them. We’re better off in here.”

“Then someone should stay up to watch the screens,” Steve shifts to his feet, “I’ll take first watch.”

“I’ll take first watch with you,” Sam announces from the floor, “Because I am wide awake right now.”

Steve takes one chair and Sam the other. Bucky and Natasha stretch out on the floor between them, with their feet under the desk and their heads by the door. Bucky crosses his boots at his ankles and pillows his head on a bent arm. He sleeps with his face to the ceiling. Natasha curls up on her side, chin tucked to her chest, jacket thrown over her body. She lays with both hands tucked between her knees, fingertips resting on the very top of a knife hilt where it protrudes from her boot. Neither shifts in their sleep.

After an hour or so of watching the screens, Sam pulls a piece of rumpled paper and a pen from his pocket and draws a three-by-three grid. He puts an X in the top right corner and passes the paper to Steve. Steve draws an O in the center square. Sam writes _I forfeit_ across the top of the grid and Steve shakes his head with a smile.

Steve writes _Afraid of a challenge?_ and slides the paper back to Sam.

_I know my limits._

Steve hesitates a second before writing, _You feeling okay?_

_Jet lagged to hell and back. But fine. You?_

_Fine._

Steve keeps the paper under his hand. His eyes slide over the curve of his N. His writing used to loop and shake, letters colliding and slipping away from each other. Now his handwriting is a common baseline and the spaces between words are obvious. He looks down at the page and watches his hand form the shapes of _Ready for tomorrow_ with the pen _._ He pushes the paper back to Sam. 

 

* * *

 

Natasha and Bucky leave the guard post when Steve and Sam wake up. They come back with spare shirts clenched in their hands like bags, full of something lumpy. 

They set the shirts on the ground and they spill open to reveal hundreds of red, green, and black berries. Natasha pulls an empty water canteen from her bag and starts stuffing the berries inside. She fills the canteen to the brim, then pours water into the gaps until it’s close to overflowing. 

Bucky pulls out another empty canteen and starts filling it with berries. He gathers berries with two handed scoops and spreads his palms just enough to allow the berries to fall through the narrow canteen neck. He fills the remaining space with water, as Natasha did.

Natasha wedges the canteen between her knees and grabs a small drill from a clip on her belt. She attaches a drill bit with short nylon strings hanging off it and stuffs it into the canteen. She holds down the trigger, and reaches out to Bucky with her free hand. He hands her the next canteen full of berries and water while the drill whines. She moves the drill to the second canteen and hands the first one to Sam.

He takes a drink and jolts like he’s been electrocuted, “Oh god.” Sam hands the canteen to Steve in a rush, who fumbles to catch it.

“I’m dead,” Sam lays back on the floor and lets his head loll side-to-side, “I am dead. I have gone to heaven.” Sam starts to sing like an off-key church choir and Bucky snickers. 

Steve takes a sip. The drink is sweet and tangy. The berries are so well blended that it feels like a thin gel on his tongue. Steve takes another sip.

Natasha looks up at Steve expectantly. He says, “This is incredible.”

“I know.”

“Hey,” Sam sits up suddenly, “Get your own.” He holds out his hand and Steve gives the canteen back.

“Do you have that drill bit just for fruit smoothies?”

Natasha cocks an eyebrow, “Maybe.” Four canteens later, they have berries left over and Sam asks for seconds.

 

* * *

 

“What is this?”

“Tear gas.”

“This?” Natasha points to the next can inside the closet. The sun will rise in under an hour and they’ve spent the last thirty minutes repacking the bags so everything they might need sits just under the zippers.

“Um,” Bucky cocks his head, “I don’t know what it’s called. It’s a nervous system trigger. Makes you panic.”

“This?”

“Causes seizures.”

“This?”

Bucky starts shaking his head as soon as Natasha points at it, “Don’t take that.”

“What does it do?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Natasha gives him a long look, “It sounds valuable.”

Bucky holds her eyes, “Do you remember the first time you heard the phrase, ‘I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy’?”

“No.”

“I do.”

 


	11. Chapter 11

* * *

  
_The asset understands that trust is a calculation. He will always behave such that the expected value of his actions is mission success.  
_

* * *

 

“The entire place is a maze. You’re familiar with the Panopticon?”

Steve nods.

“Same idea. It’s full of cell pods. Some with a guard post. Some with a ring of guards and one cell. Some with no guards, they just watch each other,” Bucky gestures with his flesh hand when he talks.

The crease between Natasha’s eyebrows deepens.

“The floor changes altitude slowly and almost all of the walls are built with a slight curve. You can’t trust your eyes. Use the maps and your compass.”

The group nods. They’re fifty yards from an air intake with a flimsy grate. Natasha pulls out her steel cutter. 

“Steve,” Bucky catches the crook of his arm, “You cannot open the cages.”

Steve nods.

There’s something new in Bucky’s eyes. He looks worried. “No matter what happens. These people are not in their right minds. They need more help than we can give them.” The words sound foreign coming from him. Steve sets his jaw.

“We get the box and we get out,” Bucky’s voice is low. It’s nearly a threat.

“SHIELD will come back for them.”

Bucky just releases Steve’s arm.

* * *

 

“Four coming up on your six. Looks like another group of six behind that.” Sam is yelling into Steve’s year, over the deafening gun fire. There are guards everywhere. Natasha and Bucky are using automatic weapons to clear a path forward and Steve and Sam are covering them, running backward as they take out guards chasing them up the hall. Steve throws his shield and Sam takes out anyone who doesn’t stay down.

The halls are lined with cells. Some prisoners cheer through the bars, some stare, and some cower in the back corners with their heads in their hands.

They’ve barely made it a hundred yards into the facility before an alarm starts to blare. Steel panels begin to slide down from the ceiling.

“Through there, NOW.” Bucky yells, pointing toward a disappearing doorway.

“Captain America!”

Steve’s head snaps up to see a thin man with sharp blue eyes less than two feet away. He reaches a thin arm through his bars. His palm is down. He’s just trying to touch, the way people do when they mob around Steve in the city. 

Steve reaches out reflexively and takes his hand.

“Captain. You’re here.” The man’s voice cracks and his eyebrows pitch up. A hopeful, disbelieving smile spreads over his face. He squeezes Steve’s hand weakly.

Steve nods, heart plummeting through the floor. “I’m here.”

“STEVE,” Bucky yells from the other side of the closing panel. Sam and Natasha are calling for him, too.

Steve pulls his hand away. He takes two steps back, holding the man’s eyes. “I’ll come back.”

“Wait, WAIT,” the man calls out, panicking. Steve runs and slides through the closing gap. “No, please. Please, PLEASE. HELP, PLEA—”

The dull thunk of metal cuts him off. Steve tries to numb himself to the ache in his chest. He runs after the three pairs of footsteps racing ahead of him.

 

* * *

 

They follow a series of hallways deeper into the complex. Bucky leads through a short tunnel and into a vaulted space. There are five stories of cells along one wall with no platforms or walkways in front of them. Each cell seems to open to a straight drop.

“There’s a control panel at the top. We need to reverse the blast doors.” Bucky says as he walks straight forward toward the cells. He grabs the vertical bars of the first cell with his metal hand and heaves himself up. He starts to scramble up the cell fronts, jumping and grabbing new hand holds with his left arm. He zigs and zags across the wall, climbing up the barred fronts of cells with calm or absent occupants. When he’s vaulting past the fourth story, a thick arm darts out between the bars and catches him by the neck. The arm jerks back harshly and slams Bucky’s head against the metal. His body goes limp for a sickening second. Then his legs start to push off the bars and his spine arches back. 

Bucky closes his metal fingers around the hand and the man in the cell snarls at him. Bucky snarls back. The arm pushes out again, holding him away from the cell, dangling in the air. Bucky kicks and grapples at the hand. His flesh hand reaches for the gun at his hip.

Steve hears the tell-tale electric zip of Sam’s wings unfurling. He turns to see Sam rocketing upward. His wings flick wide and he hovers right in front of the cell. Sam jams a gun through the bars and Steve hears him bark in a voice he’s never heard before, “You don’t know _who the fuck_ you’re messing with.” The sound is commanding, loud, and angry, “If you ever want to see the other side of this hell,” Sam leans in, head cocked menacingly, “then let him go.”

The hand lets go. Sam catches Bucky on the way down.

“We’ll find another way,” is all Bucky says when he hits the ground, in a voice that’s scratchy and faint. He leads them forward with a hand on his throat. 

* * *

 

Several floors later on, Natasha breaks open the door to a control room while the others hold off guards from both directions. She cracks the code to reverse the doors and pulls Bucky inside to look at the security video feeds. 

Bucky comes back into the hall, yelling as he signals a path forward, “They’re trying to lock the place down. They think this is a prison break.”

Bucky leads them down a narrow hall. So narrow that prisoners’ outstretched hands brush their shoulders on both sides. One hand finds the seam of Bucky’s jacket and tries to pull him closer. He grips it by the wrist and throws it off.

“Winter Soldier!”

Bucky freezes. He looks at the person behind the bars.

The person reaches out for him again, fingers closing around the back of his arm. Bucky jerks his arm back and draws his gun in a flash. He aims it at the prisoner’s head. Steve steps to the side to see her profile behind the bars. A young woman with black hair and dark eyes. She’s smiling at Bucky like a long-lost relative.

“You’re the Winter Soldier,” her voice is reverential.

Bucky doesn’t move.

The woman leans forward, tucking her chin so the muzzle of Bucky’s gun is against her forehead. Her voice is warm and certain, “It would be an honor to die by your hand.”

Bucky’s head tips back. Steve can’t see his face. He’s not moving.

“Please,” the woman whispers.

Bucky jerks his hand back and holsters his gun. He pulls away from her grip and keeps walking. She doesn’t call after him. 

They reach the end of the corridor and bash open the door to a control room. Many of the monitors are black, or displaying a single security camera feed instead of a grid of nine.

“Steve and Natasha, go back the way we came. Keep the path the exit clear. There are only a few sectors left. They’ll have the whole facility locked down within twenty minutes. Sam, you come with me for the box.” Sam nods and Bucky blows back out the door.

* * *

 

Steve and Natasha sprint back up the narrow hall. The woman with black hair watches them pass silently. 

They run into a metal panel where a doorway used to be. Natasha leads them around it using Bucky’s hand drawn map only to run into another walled off doorway.

Natasha points down another long, curving hall lined with cells, “Keep looking. I need to get into a control room and try to reverse the doors again. If you get to the top, see if you can kill the power.” Steve takes off down the hall without a word. He rounds a corner and throws his shield to clear out a group of guards. Steve ducks behind his shield when a spray of bullets surprises him from the other end of the hall. With no doorways or obstacles to hide behind, he starts backing up in a low crouch, looking for an exit.

“Captain!”

Steve looks up to his left.

“Captain, in here!” A prisoner has opened his own cell door and he’s waving Steve inside. Steve steps inside and launches his shield in one fluid motion. It takes out the two gunmen further down the hall and returns to his hand.

“Thanks,” Steve nods at the man behind him and starts to leave. The prisoner stops him with a fierce grip on Steve’s arm.

“Let me help you.” His eyes are deep-set and shadowed. They glint in the low light with a fierce clarity. His hair is long but well-kept. Steve starts to pull away again and the man slows him down with a rush of words, “I’m American, please. Let me help you. I’ve been in here for seven years. _Please_. I can get you to the top.”

Steve takes another hard look at the prisoner’s face. He’s thin with a shallow scar across his cheek that warps his skin in waves. Steve nods.

 

* * *

 

Steve starts sprinting up the ladder again, cursing under his breath. His hand is bleeding badly; it’s soaking his glove through and leaving red streaks on every rung. Steve closes his eyes against the searing heat and they ache behind his eyelids.

“The incinerator,” the prisoner had said as soon as they had left his cell, “it’s the only straight shot from top to bottom. All the floors have chutes leading to it.”

He led Steve directly there, pushing open the chute door and crawling inside. He dropped thirty feet to the incinerator floor and Steve followed suit. The structure was a smooth cylinder with ten blocks of nozzles around the base that smelled like gas. It’s featureless walls ran straight up to an exhaust vent at the top, some twenty stories away.

The thin man scrambled over the trash heap to a peg ladder bolted to the cylinder’s wall. He started climbing, surprisingly fast. Steve followed four rungs behind. The man didn’t look back until they were six stories from the ground. He paused next to a chute inlet, pushed his hand through the hinged metal door, reached around the corner, and pulled back.

The flames sprang to life almost immediately. The first blast of heat hit like a wave, rushing up and then crashing past. Too hot, too fast. It ignited an instinctive panic in Steve’s chest.

Steve grabbed the man’s ankle, “I thought you wanted to help.”

“I am helping,” the man’s voice was flat. He reached behind his back and pulled a gun from the waistband of his loose cloth pants.

Steve dodged the first bullet and forced the man’s arm up before he could fire a second. Steve gripped the man’s hand hard enough to break the bones, “Drop the gun.”

The heat was roaring up the inside of the incinerator by that point. The trash below had caught fire and was sending up flames of its own.

The man jerked his hand away and Steve immediately lunged for the gun. He caught ahold of the weapon the moment the prisoner let go of the ladder. The force of the man landing on Steve’s back with his arms around Steve’s neck nearly took him off the ladder as well. Steve scrambled to get his grip on the rung and sliced his hand on a sharp edge. Steve swung for the man’s head with his free hand and rammed the butt of the pistol into his temple. The man’s grip gave up and he dropped. Steve waited till he heard him the body hit the bottom before he dropped the gun, too.

Now Steve is just three stories from the top of the pipe and the ladder is so hot his gloves are melting to the metal. Steve climbs with his legs, just hooking his hands lightly around the rungs for balance. He reaches the top of the ladder and pulls himself up onto a gangplank. Steve sprints across the metal grate walkway, shielding his face from the immense heat rushing up from below. He lunges for the access door at the end of the path and it opens away from his hands.

Sunlight and cool air spill in through the door and Bucky comes rushing in right after them. He barrels straight into Steve, grabbing his jacket collar and yelling, “WHAT DID I FUCKING SAY.”

Steve takes a step back to keep his balance. He grips Bucky and yells the first words that come to him, “The prisoner. He told me about the tests.”

Bucky ignores him, looming right in his face with furious eyes, “Do you know how I know exactly where you’re going to be?”

“He said they break you.” Bucky shoves him back to the edge of the gangplank and Steve feels the heat scorching his back and legs, “They want to see how far you’ll go to stay alive. They make you do horrible things—”

“—because you’re fucking predictable.” Bucky interrupts him with a snarl. He’s pushed Steve against the metal guard rail; the only thing keeping him from the long drop to the flames at the bottom. 

“—and there’s no way to win. You either give up or kill your way back to your cell.”

“You’ve only got a handful of moves in your playbook and I’ve got them all memorized. How the fuck do you think I found you in all those alleys?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you didn’t need to _FUCKING know_ ,” Bucky roars at him. Steve watches his face contort. Bucky shoves Steve against the rail with his full body weight and the metal creaks.

“You’re not all good, are you Steve? You can’t push a man as hard as they’ve pushed you. Even a strong one. He gets tired,” Bucky is sweating hard, it’s dripping down the sides of his face. His eyes are narrowed, “And you’re tired.” Bucky’s voice has dropped from furious to something sinister and hopeless. His face is flushed. “And you’re ready for it to be over. Isn’t that right? You’ve been ready to end it for a while. But it’s not so easy, is it?” Bucky’s hand is tight around Steve’s jacket, he’s pulling so harshly it’s getting hard for Steve to breathe. Bucky’s chest is crushed against Steve’s and he can feel Bucky’s lungs catch on every other breath, “You’ve got too many people dragging you to shore. The system fucking needs you.” Bucky spits the last words with a hatred so deep it makes his eyes darken.

Bucky is panting, hair sticking to his face. He spits, “Well fuck the system. If you want to die, I’ll let you die.” Bucky hauls him closer, his eyes flitting between sincerity and madness, “Do you want to die, Steve?” They’re leaning back over the rail. All Bucky has to do is let go.

“No,” Steve snarls back, voice ice cold. He shoves Bucky’s chest hard. Bucky tumbles backward with a groan of pain. He digs in his heel and comes back at Steve with clenched fists. Steve catches his wrists and throws him back again. Bucky stumbles this time, landing with one knee on the floor. When he comes at Steve again his teeth are bared. Steve lunges and takes him down, throwing them away from the drop and onto the narrow patch of floor in front of the door. 

Steve is trying to catch Bucky in a hold when the door swings open again. The men on the floor jump apart and Bucky is first to his feet. He shoots the gun from the guard’s hands. Bucky moves quickly, still breathing heavy, and grabs her by the throat. He rips off her helmet and throws it into the incinerator.

Bucky draws his gun with his flesh hand, cocks it, and lowers it at her forehead. Her eyes are angry and wide. Bucky’s voice is cold, “Tell me who he is,” He tilts his head back toward Steve.

She breathes hard for a second, assessing, then speaks with a steady voice, “Captain America.”

“Who made him?”

“Hydra.”

“Why?”

“Because man can be better.”

“He doesn’t know the catechism. Explain.”

The woman looks at Steve now. Speaking in measured sentences like she’s still reciting from memory, “Hydra will elevate the human form and deliver leaders who are superior in mind, body, and spirit. We will cull the weak and rise with one fist to establish peace and unity so that mankind may turn its full attention to the acquisition of knowledge and advancement of science.”

“And who am I?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s right.”

Bucky presses the muzzle of the gun to the woman’s forehead. His voice is so quiet Steve can barely hear him, “Do you want to die?”

The woman’s eyes dart back and forth between Bucky’s. She is motionless for a second. Then her right hand twitches toward the gun at her hip and Bucky pulls the trigger. The bullet rips straight through to the door behind her and her body slumps to the floor. Bucky grabs her wrist and pulls her to the edge of the incinerator. He pushes her over with the toe of his boot. 

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Portuguese translation provided by the lovely [steviebucks](http://steviebucks.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr! Thank you!! <3

* * *

_  
The asset will reflexively disguise pain and discomfort if he is not gravely wounded or otherwise incapacitated. He protects the condition of his body and mind as important intelligence that could be easily exploited by the enemy._

* * *

 

Steve pushes out the door and Bucky follows him. They’re on top of a grassy clearing with ventilation pipes jutting up from the ground. Bucky takes off running to the east and Steve heads for the cover of the tree line. He rips off his bloody glove as he goes. 

Steve hits his knees when he reaches the forest edge. He rucks up his jacket and tears a strip from his undershirt with clumsy hands. He can’t rip the end of the strip off and has to break the weave with his teeth. Steve starts to tie the strip around his bloody hand, holding it down against his leg. 

Sam’s boots crunch onto the ground in front of him and he kneels. He takes Steve’s hand in his, smooths the strip against the wound, and ties the rough bandage around the back of Steve’s hand. He takes off one of his gloves and throws it in Steve’s lap.

Steve keeps his eyes down as he puts the glove on. He takes two breaths, intending to speak, and swallows them both. His chest is starting to hitch. He manages, “He, uh— I was,” Steve shakes his head and shuts his mouth.

“Steve,” Sam’s hand is on his shoulder, “It’s okay. You’re okay. He’s okay. Just breathe.” Sam’s hand slides to Steve’s bicep and he squeezes. “It’s all fucked up. I know. Can’t make sense of it, man.”

“It’s not him.” Steve is still staring down at his lap, “It’s not him. In that body.” He looks up at Sam’s eyes and feels his chest shake, “He’s not in there.”

“Hey,” Sam pulls at him a little, “Hey, nobody’s head is on straight out here. We got the box. We’re getting the fuck out of this jungle. Let’s go.” He stands and pulls lightly on Steve’s arm.

“He’s gone, Sam.”

“He’s not.” Sam’s voice cuts and the blunt words make Steve look up, “Maybe he’s not who you thought. So what. He just saved your ass. Let’s start there.”

“And what? Forget? Move on? How can I give up on a friend who’s sick?”

“Acceptance is not giving up.”

“And if I accept that he’s all fucked up,” Steve’s voice is rising, “that things can never be the same, then what the fuck is the point of all this?” He throws his arms up, shoulders tense.

Sam looks down at him. His face gives nothing away.

Steve stands up and leans in, “What is the point? You’re putting your life on the line.” Steve jabs Sam’s chest hard, “For what? Why are we here?”

“Because you’re looking for something. And I want to help you find it.”

Steve shakes his head, impatient and angry, “And if we never find it?”

“Then we’ll go home.”

 

* * *

 

Steve has locked himself in the family bathroom at the airport. Natasha is working on a flight out of the country and Sam and Bucky are sweeping the building for suspicious activity. They stole a Hydra helicopter to get off the base and abandoned it a mile from the airport. 

Steve dials Maria’s secure line. He calls three times in a row before she answers. 

“Have you cleaned up Oymyakon?”

“Is this just a check-in call to see if I’m doing my job?”

“Have you cleaned it up or not.”

“I’m working on getting a team together.”

Steve exhales in a rush, “You have to move faster. It’s been way too long. They’ve probably pulled back and shut down the lab by now.”

“Well good, it takes time to build a new lab. Hopefully we’ll catch them in transition.”

“Hopefully?” Steve’s voice bites, incredulous.

“I’m doing the best I can, Steve.”

“Then who the _fuck_ do I have to talk to?” Steve lets his frustration bring his voice to a point.

Silence snaps on the phone.

“Who will give a shit about the people trapped in these places?”

“Excuse me, I’m not just sitting on my ass over here. We’re turning up and shutting down new weapons silos every day.”

“This is not a fucking technology war,” Steve shakes his head in disgust, “You know the concentration camps in World War Two? That’s what we’re talking about. If we could have gone back and fought that war all over again, we would have gone for the camps first. Before Hydra. Before Hitler. Because innocent people were suffering.”

“Where do you get off telling me how to save the world?” Maria bites back, “We address the world-ending threats first. Period.”

“Well maybe you need to rethink your fucking priorities because these bastards can make things worse than a nuclear bomb.” Steve snarls into his phone, “Better to die than let the world go to hell.” He hangs up his phone and hurls it at the tile floor.

 

* * *

 

**_Mission Report_ **

_Reporting Agent: Captain Rogers_

 

_Mission objective: Achieved_

_Intel acquired. No team casualties. Infiltrated a prison and testing center 3 hours south of Boa Vista. Obtained required assets and evacuated._

 

_Action required (Recommend required assets):_

_Clean up of known base. Strike team recommended. URGENT. LIVE PRISONERS._

 

_Team Status (If compromised, detail condition):_

_Agent Romanov: Operational_

_Agent Wilson: Operational_

_Sergeant Barnes: Compromised_

_Barnes is a functional and valuable member of the team. He is suffering from psychological distress after a period of Hydra captivity. No further action required._

 

* * *

 

Steve keeps his eyes on the ground and his hands on his bag when they board the plane. He doesn’t even check their destination. 

Bucky takes the seat next to Steve and hands him the box. The lock has already been picked. Steve sits motionless with his head against the headrest and his eyes closed while the plane takes off. The space behind his eyes feels pressurized. He presses his fingertips to the creases between his eyebrows and tries to let tension ebb.

When the plane levels out in the air, Steve opens the box and pulls out three letters.

_February 12th, 1968_

_Dr. Miyashiro,_

_The tables have truly turned. Join me in setting aside an evening to commemorate this milestone in Hydra’s ascension. Now we hold the leashes of even our owners. Today, this very day, the proceeds from our asset’s political missions exceeded our government funding._

_Today we have become the primary financial engine of SHIELD and yet they suspect nothing. Their accountants believe the funds come from the sale of my advanced combat armor, to allies only, of course. I wish you could see the collection of ridiculous, groveling awards they have heaped on my walls. I will save every wretched commendation so historians can revel in the irony someday. For now, I am content to share this victory with my Hydra brethren as this is a shared achievement, and a victory that not of us dared to hope could be reached so quickly after our re-establishment._

_Today we have shaken off our shackles and forged forward to higher ground. I have already sent word to Thompson to double our marketing efforts to all powers who might make use of our services. To many future successes my friend!_

_On the subject of business, I have a few requests for additional refinements to the asset. The serum is without fault; I think our work on the physical infrastructure is complete. I am mostly satisfied with the psychological status as well. This memory drug is exceedingly effective. I have never seen such clarity and conviction without compromised mental processing. The asset does not, however, always submit to handler commands. The asset is valuable because it is still human. To remove that humanity would make it no more than a weapon. However, the asset was originally shaped for another purpose and his ingrained obstinance is a barrier to optimal performance._

_First of all, we need to add an addictive compound to the drug, as it would be foolish to rely on the asset’s programming to guide it back to its handlers when we can strengthen that signal with a physical need. Secondly, put your best men to work on a compound to induce obedience. I know you have a number of obedience drugs in trial already; if any show promise then expedite their testing. It would be a great shame to lose the asset in the field due to developmental negligence._

_Regards,_

_Dr. Arnim Zola_

Bucky has been reading over Steve’s shoulder. Steve waits for him to sit back before folding the page back into the box and pulling out the second letter.

_March 4th, 2005_

_Dr. Tanaka,_

_Condizente com as tradições da HYDRA, eu gostaria de recebê-lo formalmente à irmandade com uma carta para comemorar a ocasião—_

Steve lifts his head to look at Bucky. Bucky nods wordlessly and takes the paper from his hands. He translates, speaking quietly to the space between them,

“Dr. Tanaka

In keeping with Hydra tradition, I wanted to formally welcome you to the brotherhood with a letter to commemorate the occasion. We are a quiet group, well hidden from the front lines, and if we do not endeavor to record our own history I fear it will be lost entirely. It is particularly critical in this season, where the last of the founding members are passing on the legacy of their work to the rising generation.

It is truly the dawning of a new age. I could have never foreseen this day when I first accepted Dr. Zola’s call for men of science. Though Hydra is now a stalwart force, it was once only a loose collective, scrambling for footing in the wake of WWII loses. Our past gives us perspective on what a tremendous accomplishment it is for a small league of scientists to singlehandedly build the scaffolding to support worldwide peace. Project Insight will complete Hydra’s ascension, a magnitude of success of which we could only dream for years and years.”

Bucky’s tone is flat. He pauses for a beat between paragraphs.

“Dr. Radziewicz’s methodology will be the philosophical underpinnings of all future generations, regardless of race, religion, sex, or physical ability. Mankind will rise on the back of Hydra’s foresight and Hydra will find its rightful place in the history books. However, do not lose sight of the important work of this facility and the critical role of secondary psychological and physical conditioning. Remember that nature is unfailingly random. Though we may prune the thorns from the genetic pool, there will always be natural mutations.”

Steve’s ears prick with the sound of Bucky’s voice speaking for such a long time, and with words that aren’t his own.

“After Project Insight provides a stable, homogenous population, Hydra will turn to genetic deviants with compassion and provide several conditioning programs for those who wish to rejoin the population. Along with the honor of running this lab comes the responsibility to organize and execute these programs in the near future. Secondarily, but no less critically, you must prepare chemical controls to neutralize assets, test subjects, and voluntary reconditioning participants in the event that psychological programming fails.”

Bucky breathes in a little slower at the end of the sentence. He lets the breath fall out again and draws another.

“Always remember that science is reliant on experimentation. Even as we prepare to launch at an unheard of scale, we are still iterating and refining our process and our formulae. Let us not forget that our greatest psychological success was never fully integrated into Hydra, and our most valuable asset is still rebellious without sedation. I stress the ongoing nature of the work not to discourage you, but to inspire you. There are many problems still to solve. Give your best effort to the work and carry Hydra’s legacy forward to a generation that will respect it. 

Faithfully,

Dr. Hisashi Miyashiro”

Bucky hands back the letter without looking up. Steve tucks it away and unfolds the last paper. Its folds are crisp and the paper is spotless.

_May 13th, 2014_

_Dr. Tanaka,_

_Prepare for emergency relocation. All essential personnel will be collected in one week’s time. All non-essential personnel, live test subjects, and cold tissue samples will be transported during the month of June to a secure holding facility. Follow standard emergency procedure._

Steve looks up at Bucky’s face. He waits for him to finish reading and says, “June is four days away.”

Bucky points at the bottom of the page, “It’s not signed.”

Steve watches him, the way his eyes scan down the page and his brow creases. Bucky’s eyes are an even lighter blue when viewed from the side. Steve keeps his voice low, “They leased you out. Did you know that?”

“So now you believe the letters.”

Bucky looks up and Steve looks back at him, face impassive.

“Yeah, I knew.” Bucky turns his head slightly to look through the seats at the people sitting behind them. “They sent me on all the jobs that couldn’t be briefed. Not enough intel. Political, quiet kills most of the time. When someone needed a very well-guarded person to disappear. The kind of job you can’t plan out.” Bucky’s voice is barely a whisper. His eyes are calm and clear. The shadows underneath deepen when he looks down. “They used me because I could fake a kill. Make it look like an accident, heart attack, suicide, inside job, whatever you want. Every time. Flawless.” His head tips back and the overhead light washes out his skin. “Got my start with your handlers. First one when I was thirteen.”

Bucky shifts to look straight ahead. He watches the flight attendants in the galley. His lips barely move when he speaks, “I saw what they were doing to you. Setting up fights, making you sick. Pushing you. Breaking you.” Bucky turns his head to look at Steve again, “I thought they were going to kill you. So I killed them first. And after a while I realized that the guys in the alleys weren’t calling the shots. I worked up the chain. I took out mob runners, then mob lackeys, then mob bosses. It’s not always the guy at the top that has the real power either. I killed a couple of Zola’s assistants. Would have killed Zola himself but,” Bucky shakes his head, “never got the chance.”

Bucky stretches his right wrist with his metal hand, “You can’t just kill a mob boss and walk away. So I left no trace. I was damn good at it. Zola didn’t figure it out until he had me in Austria and his attendants started dropping like flies. That’s when he saw the _value_ ,” Bucky’s face shows a flicker of emotion, “in me. They gave me weapons but they didn’t teach me to kill. They didn’t teach me how to figure out who needed to die.”

“Bucky,” Steve looks at the back of the seat in front of him. He turns over words in his mind and draws a deep breath.

“I gave myself the mask,” Bucky’s voice dips into gravel, coming out rough, “when I was seventeen. So I wouldn’t even breathe on the bodies.”

“Bucky,” Steve says it more forcefully this time, “I’ve known you my whole life. We agree on that?”

Bucky exhales and his eyes drop a little. He says nothing.

“You were not, and are not, the kind of person who— murders—” Bucky is leaning against the back of his seat with his shoulder pushed up. Steve holds his eyes, tries to keep his voice level, “Maybe they picked you because you were American—”

“They had their pick of Americans,” Bucky’s eyes aren’t sharpening, his face is slack like he doesn’t mind listening to Steve spin possibilities, “Would’ve been easier to get a Russian. Most of my jobs were in the USSR anyway.”

Steve lets it go, “I know it’s not going to do any good to argue with you. But the idea that you killed a man at thirteen—”

Bucky’s eyes drift back up to Steve’s. He blinks.

“It was a woman,” Bucky starts, “A nurse at the hospital who was on orders to keep you bedridden for at least a week.” Bucky holds Steve’s eyes when he talks, unflinching, “It was messy. I suffocated her with a chloroform soaked rag. Held her down until her pulse stopped.” Bucky’s eyes are open and focused but looking more distant every second, “Didn’t know what to do with the body. I dragged it down to the morgue but every body had a tag on it. So I stuffed it into a potato bag and took it to the docks. Stole a Grimsen pistol off a sleeping guard and shot the bag eight times. To be sure.” His eyes snap to the present again, “I got smarter after that.”

“Bucky, they’ve made you think you’re someone you’re not.” Steve’s voice pitches up in spite of his efforts to keep it flat. His legs are tense on the seat and his spine is stiff, “This is not— you're not— You’re talking about death like it was normal.”

“It is normal.”

Steve stares at him, bile rising in his throat. He swallows around shallow breaths. His mind can’t quite hold Bucky’s face in his mind’s eye and the face in front of him belongs to a stranger.

“It is for me,” Bucky is still holding his eyes and Steve’s face is pulling in on itself, caving to the pressure inside. “Death is— right. It’s how all lives end. It feels,” Bucky moves two hands through the air in a circle, “complete.”

Steve looks away. Suddenly, Bucky’s right hand is on Steve’s jaw and he’s jerking Steve’s head back toward him. Steve’s head snaps to the side with the force of it and Bucky is there, inches away, snarling, “ _Fucking look at me when I talk to you_.” He releases Steve’s jaw. Anger and disgust flushes hot over Steve’s face. The urge to spit in Bucky’s face grabs him by the throat. 

Bucky leans back just enough that their black eyes can focus on each other, “It makes me feel like I’m not even human.” Anger drops out the bottom like a cord has been cut. Steve stares back at him, chest rising and falling too fast.

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I've added tags for Referenced Child Abuse and Discussion of Past Graphic Violence to Children. Hope you all are enjoying the story!

* * *

  
_The asset keeps a clear path to his nearest weapon.  
_  

* * *

 

Breathing hard in a plane seat, mind coming up empty and aching. Steve reels, trying find his balance again. His fading anger leeches into his voice, “Bucky you would never— That’s not who you were. You would never, ever say those things." 

“I’m saying it right now,” Bucky’s anger is untempered. His voice is quiet but it spits with menace, “What do you think this is?” He throws his hands up in the air, gesturing at the plane body around them, “A dream? Why the hell wouldn’t I say it? They gave me a medal for killing people to keep you alive during the war. I kept you alive before that too. What’s the difference?”

“I don’t know why you think you know me so well,” Bucky’s voice has gone mean. Steve just watches his eyes and keeps his mouth shut. “I don’t even know me that well. I thought for years that I was protecting you so I’d stay alive too. But was I really that fucking delusional? What, were they just going to let me walk away when it was over?” Bucky jerks his head impatiently, “So maybe I thought I was fucking with the system, slaughtering the wolf pack to keep a lamb alive. But maybe I knew. Maybe I knew all along that they’d throw me right to the dogs if I didn’t make myself valuable. And I would do fucking anything—”

Bucky stops himself. He closes his mouth. His chin drops and he stares hard at Steve for a beat from under drawn brows. Steve waits a moment longer and looks away.

Bucky speaks to his profile, “You’re blind to it. You think you’re the only one that’s hurting. You’re grieving me right in front of my eyes.”

“Bullshit,” Steve spits it at the seat back in front of him. He won’t meet Bucky’s eyes, “You know I don’t back down from a fight.”

Bucky is still. After a tense minute he huffs a laugh and looks away.

 

* * *

 

Steve checks his ticket when land swims into view under his window. Johannesburg. 

He follows Natasha’s lead through another international airport, listening to the announcements play in languages he can’t distinguish from one another. They get in a cab and she gives the driver directions in Afrikaans.

Steve sits in the back of the van with his bag between his legs. He rests his head against the window and closes his eyes. When the road gets rough, asphalt texture making the tires hum, he lifts his head up a centimeter or so. Occasional potholes rock the car and Steve lets the momentum carry his head into the glass or away from it. He keeps his arms folded over his chest. It feels like the middle of the night but the sun on his eyelids is slowly convincing his body otherwise.

They pull up at a hotel and Natasha pays the driver. She always seems to have the local currency in her pocket. Steve carries two bags into the lobby. He keeps his eyes on the tile while Natasha checks in. Sam changed into lightweight clothing sometime between the Brazilian base and the plane ride, but Steve and Bucky are still wearing mostly combat gear. Bucky has on a large coat over the leather and kevlar jacket he fights in. He’s detached the gun holsters from his pants and tucked them into his bag. But there’s a dark stain on his knee that is obviously blood. Obvious to Steve.

Steve looks down. He patched the gash over his thigh in Hong Kong but the seam is pulling apart again. Steve reaches down and tucks the kevlar patch back inside his torn pants. He looks up to see Bucky watching him. Their eyes meet and neither reacts. Eyes slide apart again.

 

* * *

 

“Alright. Time for food.” 

“I agree!” Sam’s muffled voice from the bed.

“Let’s go soldier,” Natasha slides a gun into the waistband of her pants and pulls her shirt over it.

“Oh, Food? Wait. Did you say food? Because I thought you said time for sleep.” Sam calls out from where he’s sprawled on one of the two beds. 

“Food first. Come on it’s—” Natasha checks the time on her phone, “like six in the morning back in Brazil.”

“Am I supposed to be on Brazil time?” Sam lifts his head from the bed. “Because my clock is stuck somewhere between Siberia and Hong Kong.”

“Does somebody need a new clock?” Bucky asks patronizingly from the room’s desk. He’s leaning back with his boots propped up on the desk edge. “You know they have these electric ones now.”

Sam throws a pillow across the room at him. He bats it away with enough force to send it straight to the floor. Sam heaves himself to his feet with a long-suffering groan. He draws the laces of his boots around his ankle once before tying them in the front.

“You two,” Natasha turns to follow Sam out the door, “Need to shower and change.”

“Yes mom,” Bucky calls after the closing door.

 

* * *

 

Bucky showers first. Steve changes into jeans, which feel strangely light after his combat trousers, and sits on the bed to mend the patch. He uses glue this time, spreading a thin line along the edge of the patch and pressing it firmly to the fraying cloth. He wipes away the excess gel and carefully hangs his pants over the closet door. 

Bucky comes out of the bathroom with wet hair in his face. Steve walks into the steam and closes the door again. He sheds his clothes and strips off the bandage over his cut palm. 

He showers with a knot in his stomach. Steve washes his hair with both hands even though the soap makes his cut sting. He scrubs and lets it burn.

Steve pulls on clean clothes and opens the door. Bucky is sitting on one of the beds, wearing a black cotton t-shirt Steve has never seen before. He has one foot pulled up into his lap and seems to be picking a splinter out of his heel. He walks over and takes a seat opposite Bucky on the other bed. 

“Bucky?”

Bucky looks up.

“Would you consider, going to see a doctor when we get back? A brain doctor. Psychologist, psychiatrist, whatever you want—”

“Get back where?” Bucky interrupts.

“Back home.”

“No,” Bucky shuts his mouth at the end of the word like a punctuation mark.

Steve rubs his palm in a circle around his kneecap. He inhales. “The doctor at the hospital in Romania said you might— have a hard time. Accepting help. And I know what that feels like—”

“Oh yeah?” Bucky’s voice has already risen to challenge and Steve grimaces at the sound, “Why don’t you tell me, Steve. How helpful all those doctors were when you woke up from the ice. Tell me how much better you feel now.” 

“Bucky,” Steve looks up at him without raising his head, “I don’t want to fight you,” the nerves in Steve’s stomach flare when he speaks.

Bucky goes back to picking at his splinter.

“So tell me why you’re here,” Steve tries to wait with an open mind and open face.

Bucky looks at him. His eyes take in Steve’s face, “I want you to stop.”  


“Then why are you here? Fighting next to me?”

“How else am I supposed to do it?”

“No, I mean if you think I should stop, then why don’t you stop first?”

“Because,” Bucky sits back a little, looking a little surprised, “I don’t mean anything. I could be another merc on the streets. You’re the symbol.”

“You mean Captain America.”

“Yeah, is that not you?” sarcasm weighs down the words but Bucky doesn’t spit them.

“Captain America is a symbol for good, though. For hope and bravery and courage.”

“He’s a symbol of doing what you’re supposed to do. Buy those bonds. Die at war. Salute the casket.”

“I’m the first to admit that most wars are fought for the wrong reasons. But Captain America is about doing what’s right. No matter what it takes.”

“No,” Bucky’s tone drops. It’s not anger but conviction sharpening his words, “Captain America is about being chosen, about being called. He’s about a life with no choice and an honorable death in the line of duty.”

“It’s easy to twist someone’s intentions when they’re brave enough to take a stand—”

Bucky interrupts him, “—yeah, take a stand with a team called The Avengers.” Bucky’s eyes are sharp, “Are you doing what’s right? Or getting even?”

Steve’s face hardens.

“What you stand for matters more than what you do. And everything that you stand for is something Erskine and Zola fed to you. You are the perfect creation. You believe in justice and peace but you’ll go to war. You’ll kill but you’re not bloodthirsty. You can be merciless or compassionate. You’ll die before you back down from a fight and you’ll move heaven and earth to do the _right_ thing.”

“And that means breaking every rule in the book if I have to. Nobody tells me what to—”

“The world can’t see you up close Steve. They don’t see the shit you have to cut through behind the scenes, just the hell you raise to win the fight. They see a perfect soldier. You are a symbol, Steve. A fucking Hydra symbol.”

Steve shakes his head, disgusted, but Bucky presses on.

“So you save New York. Got your face all over the world, playing in a loop on the news,” Bucky moves a human finger in a circle. His veins and tendons stand out more than they did two weeks ago. He’s losing weight. “You have any idea how many people were cheering for Captain America because he’s Hydra’s son? Saving us all so we could carry on our work?” Bucky leans forward, one hand braced against his knee, lip curling up on one side, “Because man can be better.”

Steve’s hands jump to his sides, anger flaring hot through his exhausted body. “So why should I stop. Why not kill every bastard—”

“Because you can’t win.” Bucky flicks a dismissive hand to the side.

“But you still can’t stop fighting.” Steve leans forward, jabbing a finger at Bucky’s chest, “Do you believe what they told you? That you’re a weapon and nothing more? Why should I give up if you can’t walk the fuck away.”

“You walk away and I’ll follow you out the door.”

“Tell me why that isn’t exactly what Hydra wants.”

Bucky snorts, “Their perfect soldier telling the system to go fuck itself?”

“To take me out of commission. To get me out of the way. Off to cry myself to sleep because I can’t control what Hydra does with a symbol.

“They strapped a bomb to a kid Steve,” Bucky’s voice is thin. Suddenly emotionless. His eyes clear in a flash. “He was too afraid, couldn’t stop crying. So they gave him a shield with a big silver star and a red stripe. And they said if he did what was right, for the glory of Hydra, he’d come back from the dead. Just like Captain America.”

Silence settles between them. Nausea comes washing up the back of Steve’s neck. Bucky waits, his eyelids opening themselves after each blink with some effort. The shadows under his eyes have met the shadows over his eyes at the corners.

“Weren’t you saying I couldn’t win?” Steve asks quietly, “If not Captain America, then someone else.”

“Who else has come back from the dead?” Bucky’s head tips to one side, “No one’s nearly as good as you. You’re perfect. You’re the reality check. Hydra makes sure a kid grows up thinking the earth revolves around Captain America, so when she gets out in the world she finds everyone else looks up to him too. It’s the checksum. That calming voice in your head that says, ‘Yeah. Everything you’ve been taught to believe is right.’”

Steve sets his jaw.

“And yeah, you can’t win. Maybe they would find someone else. A second choice.” Bucky’s voice has quieted as well. He looks down at his hands, “But at least it wouldn’t be you.”

“So why not do everything I can to send every last one of them to hell?” Frustration burns a hole in Steve’s chest. He grits his teeth.

“You go ahead and try.”

“I am.”

“I know. I’m right fucking here Steve.” Bucky gestures two hands at his chest. He sounds exasperated more than angry.

“What will you do after,” Steve changes the subject abruptly, “When this is over.”

Bucky pushes himself to standing, “Let’s take it a day at a time.”

 

* * *

 

“Hey!” Sam’s loud voice echoes through the room. He sounds like he’s been laughing. 

“We brought food,” Natasha calls after him. The door clicks closed and the sound of crinkling grocery bags settling on the floor makes the air feel full of static. Steve can hear them from out on the balcony, but he’s too far away to reply without shouting. He’s crouched with his back to the glass door. His head is tilted back so the crown of his head is against the door and his eyes are on the sky. He doesn’t need to look to know Bucky is exactly where he’s been for the last two hours: sitting on the bed with a kit of tiny metal tools in front of him. Opening up plates in his metal arm and making repairs.

It takes all of thirty seconds for Natasha to join him on the balcony. 

“Hi,” she says from the doorway.

“Hi.”

“Can I join you?”

“Sure.”

Natasha shuts the glass door behind her and leans back on it. She bends her knees, sinking until she’s next to Steve.

“If we can find him, Radziewicz is probably the end of the line. At least of the lab network.”

“I know,” Steve says to the sky.

She shifts, hair twisting on the glass, to look at Steve, “Do you want to do this?”

He turns to look back at her. “What do you mean?”

“Do you want to go after this lab?”

“Of course. What choice do I have?”

“You could walk away. You can always walk away.”

“I don’t do that,” Steve looks back up at the sky.

“I do.”

Steve soaks in the silence, stomach like lead. Natasha stands up and goes back inside.   
  


* * *

 

Sam insists on the floor so Steve takes a bed. He sleeps on his side without a pillow so the top of his ear rests on the mattress. The city noise reverberates in the space between the bed and his skin. It’s like listening to the inside of a seashell. 

Steve wakes up to the sound of Sam lighting the stove in the kitchenette. It seems to wake everyone else up as well because Steve looks across at Bucky in the other bed, rubbing at his eyes, and sees Natasha stretching her arms above her head on the roll-away with her eyes squeezed shut.

“Goooood morning, lady and gentlemen!” Sam chirps from the stove, “We will be having a three course breakfast today if you’d like to seat yourselves in the dining room.”

“Where is that?” Natasha asks groggily.

“Uh,” Sam looks around their crowded hotel room, “Right where you are m’lady.”

Natasha laughs softly at that, her eyes still closed, and looks happier than she has in weeks.

“First course is a blend of old-fashioned and steel cut oats, gently simmered in spring water.”

“You’re kidding me,” Bucky pushes up on his elbows and pulls his hips back on the bed so he can lean against the headboard, “You and the goddamn oatmeal.”

“You two,” Sam points at Bucky and then Steve with his stirring spoon, grinning widely, “get a double serving. Because ya’ll are huge.”

Steve and Bucky both groan, making a strange harmony. Natasha laughs at the sound, which makes everyone else laugh too.

“When did you get up?” She asks Sam.

“Three o’clock!” Sam says joyfully.

“So you didn’t sleep at all.”

“Not a wink!” Sam turns to grin at her.

Natasha shakes her head, curling further under her blanket, “You better hope we have another long flight coming up.”

“Oh I’m counting on it.” Sam spoons the oatmeal into bowls and brings them around. Bucky immediately brings his to his lips and shovels the oatmeal into his mouth. He finishes the bowl in two huge gulps.

“Somebody’s hungry,” Sam says from the stove.

“Nah, I just want to savor it.”

“When it’s already in your stomach.”

“Yeah.”

Natasha doesn’t bother to sit up. She eats with the bowl on the mattress, tucked between her chin and her chest. She turns her face to the ceiling to drop each spoonful into her mouth.

“Second course is a—” Sam waves his hand over the pan, “lightly roasted veggie sausage.”

Sam spears two sausages onto a fork, spears two more on another fork, and walks over to Bucky.

“Wow, look at you with your fancy ass forks,” Bucky says under his breath as he takes a fork in each hand.

“I need all the plates for the third course.”

Sam serves everyone and then serves Bucky and Steve twice more.

“Thanks,” Bucky says quietly when Sam hands him his sixth sausage fork.

They’re all sitting up now, legs folded under rumpled blankets. Bucky looks past Steve and out the balcony’s glass door.

“This morning’s third and final course,” Sam clears his throat dramatically, “is a seasonal fruit mélange. Served with freshly ground, artisanal roast instant coffee.”

Sam brings around plates of cut fruit and mugs of coffee, “Nat bought a metric ton of this stuff so drink up.”

“You’ll thank me later,” she says through a mouthful of papaya.

“Nothing says ‘on the road’ like instant coffee,” Steve hums to himself.

Bucky snorts, “Nothing says ‘war’ like instant coffee. Normal people just drink Starbucks when they travel.” Steve looks over at him but there’s no bite to his words, “They don’t have to worry about carrying it through a rainstorm and cooking it over a soggy fire.”

Steve nods his concession and takes another sip.

“Speaking of, we should cook these on a fire next time,” Bucky gestures to the small pile of forks on the nightstand.

“The sausages?” Sam asks from his perch on the kitchen counter.

“Yeah. I mean these were great,” Bucky’s mouth quirks up a little, “but nothing compares to fire-roasted.”

“You mean burned,” Sam deadpans back.

“Oh it’s gonna be like that?” Bucky laughs and Steve’s stomach twists.

“Yeah. I’ll believe it when I taste it.” Sam nods at him emphatically.

“You’re on.”

 


	14. Chapter 14

* * *

  
_The asset will consult teammates only if the interaction benefits the mission. He does not seek advice to improve his own situational analysis.  
_

* * *

 

“I need to go talk to some friends,” Natasha announces toward the desk, where Sam is sitting in front of a newspaper and Steve is reading over his shoulder. 

“Okay,” Steve nods and catches sight of Bucky behind her, loading ammunition for an automatic weapon into a bag. He has his combat pants on again but the blood has been washed out.

“Can you two go to the Embassy and file for replacement passports?”

Sam looks up from the paper.

“You’re Americans. Traveling. Lost your passports. Need new ones. I just need to get these papers into their system.” Natasha gestures to a neat stack of forms on the bed.

“Yeah,” Steve nods, “Of course.”

“Be back by three. We may need to—” Natasha shrugs, “catch a flight or something.”

Sam nods, “Be safe out there.” Their eyes catch for a second and Natasha nods. 

 

* * *

 

“Yes, that’s right,” Sam nods through the glass at the Embassy official. 

“And your bag was stolen?”

“Yeah, I—” Sam raises his arms hopelessly, looking equal parts embarrassed and frustrated.

The official sighs silently and starts rifling through the papers in front of her. 

Steve’s attention is drawn to the next window over where an official is enunciating loudly through the bullet-proof glass at a man standing a few feet from Steve. He’s said the same thing three times, “I do not have a translator.”

The young man next to Steve stamps his foot impatiently and the guard at the end of counter begins to walk closer. He’s gesturing in quick, precise movements that look like sign language. He keeps pointing to a paper in the shallow tray that passes under the window. He lifts a pen from the counter and mimes writing.

“I can’t,” the agent is shaking his head with one hand on his chest. The woman in front of Sam stops typing and looks up. “I can’t,” he repeats loudly, “I can’t write back and forth. We have to talk. You have to come back when we have a translator.”

The young man exhales, visibly frustrated. He drops his head in his hand and leans forward on the counter. He raises his head and looks the official in the eyes. The young man jabs a finger at the watch on his wrist and shakes his head.

“I’m sorry,” the official says with a flat look, “You’ll have to come back.”

* * *

 

Sam tucks their temporary ID cards into the waistband of his pants for the walk back to the hotel. 

“Hey Sam,” Steve keeps his eyes on the sidewalk, “Would you tell me if you thought I was making a mistake?”

“Yeah,” Sam answers immediately. He doesn’t look over at Steve.

“Do you think I should call it off?”

“Call what off?”

“The search. The lab busts. Gathering intel.”

Sam is quiet for a minute, “Do you think you should?”

“No.”

“Then why are you asking?”

“Because—” Steve shrugs. He can’t think of anything to say. He lets the silence step in again.

“Do you think it’s a mistake?”

Steve sighs, “Not a mistake, but— maybe not the best way— to help.”

“Help him or help you?”

“Help him,” Steve glances over at Sam.

“Because other than the long claw back from addiction, he’s doing fine.”

Steve’s voice snaps, incredulous, “He’s not, Sam. You should hear how he talks about—”

“The only person that that story bothers is you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Angry now.

“A lot of people come back with very different—” Sam’s head tips to the side, “feelings about how things were before they shipped out. If they can move on then it’s better to just let it lie.”

“You’re talking about traumatized soldiers, not someone who’s been brainwashed.”

“He could use someone to talk to,” Sam nods like they’re agreeing, “But he doesn’t need someone to fix him.”

“That sounds like a cop out,” Steve’s hands are tucked into his pants pockets.

“I’m not going to say you need to stop. But I will say you need to back up if you think you’re doing this for him.”

Steve grabs Sam’s arm and pulls back, turning him around. “I owe him,” Steve says low and serious, “He’s a friend and I let him down. If that makes this all about me then so be it."

Sam’s eyes are harder than Steve remembers seeing them. “Have you asked him what he wants?”

“Yes,” Steve releases his arm.

“What’d he say?”

“Some delusional Hydra bullshit,” Steve huffs, frustrated and trying to calm down, “I can barely listen to it when he’s—.”

“What did he say.”

“That he wants me to stop. So Hydra will stop holding me up like their own symbol. But what the fuck can I do about—”

“Is that an unreasonable thing to want?”

“Yeah. It is.” Steve’s neck is flush and his voice is too sharp.

“But if he said he wanted you to burn Hydra to the ground,” Sam stops walking and looks Steve in the eye, “If he wanted you to kill every last person that hurt him.” Sam lets the silence step in. It makes Steve’s stomach clench. “You’d say yes in a heartbeat. You’d die trying.” There’s no anger in Sam’s voice. 

“Yeah I would.” Steve’s own anger has hardened to plaster behind his ribs, “At least then I’d know he wasn’t working for them.”

 

* * *

 

Sam and Steve get back to the hotel around one in the afternoon. Sam wipes down the temporary IDs, bags them, and sets them on the desk. They’re watching a terrible movie on TV when something slams into the hotel room door. 

Steve jumps to his feet and sprints toward the door. He hears Sam cock a pistol behind him and run around the bed to get a clear shot at the door. Steve reaches the door handle the second the door shakes in its frame from another hit. He jerks it open without looking through the peephole.

Steve sees Bucky’s dark hair in a tangle and takes a step back. Bucky blows into the room, tumbling in with something in his arms. He falls forward onto one of the beds, which is unmade and covered in discarded clothing and weapons parts. He steps back and Steve sees her.

Natasha. Lying still and limp. There’s vomit streaking down her jacket and staining her shirt. Steve falls toward the bed. Drawn to her body with no idea how to help. His hands come up for her face.

Bucky elbows him hard in the chest and throws a hand out over her body, fingers stretched wide, “Don’t touch her,” Steve’s eyes snap to meet his and he sees Bucky has a bloody cloth tied around his nose and mouth, “Contact poison.”

Steve’s eyes fly back to Natasha’s frame and his body cries out to fly to her. Bucky takes two lunging steps to the other bed, grabs Steve’s bag with both hands and upends it. He falls to his knees on the pile of clothes and guns and supplies and digs with hands like claws. He pulls the small black SHIELD bag out and rips it open. He grabs a vial from the array and pushes back onto his feet. Bucky wrenches off the vial cap and stabs the sharp at its tip into Natasha’s neck. The pressurized vial forces the liquid through Natasha’s skin. Bucky throws it to the ground and hooks one arm under Natasha’s knees and the other under her shoulders. 

He runs her into the bathroom and sets her in the shower with her feet toward the faucet. Steve and Sam crowd into the doorway, looking in. He turns on the water by bashing the control to the side and rips the shower head from the wall. Water sprays down in a violent spit. Bucky strips off his jacket and throws it to the floor.

“Give me that,” he points to the trashcan by the door. Steve jumps to pick it up and throw it. The now broken shower is gushing water from what’s left of the shower head and the tub faucet at the same time. Bucky wedges the metal bin under the faucet. 

He touches Natasha’s face with his metal arm. His voice is soft, barely audible over the water, “Natasha, I need you stay awake. Stay with me, okay?”

Her eyes roll open, unseeing, and close again.

Bucky stands with one boot in the tub, pulls the now full bin from the faucet, and lifts Natasha’s head with his left hand. He splashes the water roughly into her face. She gasps and sputters. She draws two breaths that sound like her throat has closed up.

Bucky moves quickly, wedging the bin back under the water’s flow. He bends the pipe jutting out the top of the shower wall so it’s spraying right at her face. Natasha’s twists weakly, gasping for breath through the water. 

Bucky tugs off her boots without undoing the laces. He unzips her pants one-handed and rips them down, taking her underwear with it. He pulls the sopping pile of cloth free from her body and drops it in the toilet. Bucky uses his metal hand to take off her jacket and shirt. He pulls her bra over her head without trying to unclasp it. 

Bucky pauses to douse her with water again. “Stay awake, alright? I know it’s hard. I know it hurts. Can you count to one hundred? Natasha?”

There are guns strapped around her hips, a knife sheathed between her legs, a small fabric patch that conceals something small and circular against her skin. Bucky rips them roughly off her body. Natasha has started to shiver.

Bucky moves her arms above her head, always touching her with his metal hand, and splashes water on the undersides of her arms and over her breasts. Natasha’s head lolls back and slumps to one side. The shiver has become a full-body shake.

Bucky touches her jaw again. He lifts her head, trying to steady it, “Natasha? Can you hear me?” Bucky’s hair is soaking wet and hanging in his face. 

For a long moment, the only sound is the water spraying and the bin overflowing where it sits wedged under the faucet. Steve can feel his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He stands in the doorway, hand braced against the frame.

Bucky shifts in a flash, his fingers dig in to Natasha’s jaw and he growls something in Russian. He starts spitting long phrases that sound like rebukes, voice getting steadily louder. He barks Natasha’s name and it sounds different now. The emphasis has shifted to the end of the word and the vowels cut. He jerks her head harshly. Her face draws in, brows furrowing. Bucky starts to yell, so loud it can be heard from at least two rooms away. He shifts his hand from her jaw to the top of her neck and pulls up.

A thin trickle of blood cuts down Natasha’s lip, over the corner of her mouth, and disappears under her chin. Bucky grabs her left shoulder and pulls her up from the tub edge. He shakes her fiercely and her head drops back, exposing her throat. He leans in to roar in her face and sinks his metal fingers into her arm. For a terrifying second, Steve’s mind sees a lifeless body instead of a person. A corpse instead of a friend. He tries to breathe in and smells blood. 

Bucky shoves Natasha backward and her head cracks against the shower tile. He pants in her face, narrowed eyes watching her closely. Death itself, dressed in black and dripping wet. Bloody cloth over his face. Bucky’s shoulders are bunched under his shirt and the cut of his body, crouched in the tub, makes him look like something other than a person as well.

Natasha’s face moves first, grimacing weakly. Then her eyes open and sharpen with some difficulty. She bites something back at him in raspy Russian. Bucky leans in even closer, his cloth-covered nose is nearly touching hers, and growls in her face. He shoves her head back into the tub edge with his forehead. She jerks, makes a savage sound, and pushes up against him, neck straining. Bucky backs off and stands. He lifts the bin from under the faucet and splashes water over her legs. Natasha’s breathing is ragged and her face is flushed. Her eyes are swimming in and out of focus but she’s awake.

She spits angry Russian at Bucky and he responds, voice growing colder with every word. The shake is getting worse and Natasha is slipping down into the tub as her body convulses. Natasha vomits yellow bile, stomach hollowing around her ribs. Bucky picks her up by one arm and sets her on her side. He washes the sick down the drain and starts splashing water over her back. He dumps another bin of water over her head and pauses to squeeze the excess out of her hair.

Bucky answers Natasha’s furious, slurred sounds in Russian and turns to Steve, continuing in English as if it’s all one thought, “Rip up the towels and put them here,” he points to the floor by the tub.

Steve and Sam work quickly, shredding the towels into strips and squares. Natasha’s voice gets steadier the longer she yells up at Bucky. Steve watches him scoop the towel rags from the floor, wet them, and scrub long lines over Natasha’s skin. He wipes a cloth down her leg and tosses it on the wet pile in the toilet.

Bucky cleans her arms, her back, her stomach. He covers every inch of her skin, careful around sensitive areas. He works up her chest and wipes several cloth strips around her neck. He cleans her face and her voice starts to fade. She’s still mumbling in Russian with her face screwed into a scowl when Bucky holds her mouth open and pours water inside. Her head jerks in his hold, trying to pull away.

“Draw a breath,” Bucky switches back to English and his voice mellows. Natasha inhales slowly, her eyes closing again. “Now hold it.” Bucky tips her head back and pours water up her nose. He rights her quickly and says, “Breathe out hard.” Natasha exhales water out her nose and coughs shallowly. 

“You’ll be okay,” Bucky is holding the back of her head with his metal hand, “You’re gonna be alright. You did well,” His voice is a soothing murmur. He tugs down the cloth over his nose and mouth and brings his skin hand to her face for the first time. He smooths back her hair, “You’re very strong. You’re so strong Natasha.” Her eyes drift open, something unreadable passing over her face. Bucky is whispering to her with her head in his hands, “It’s over. It’s all over. You’re okay.” Natasha pulls back suddenly, her head twisting out of Bucky’s hands. He lets her rest it back against the tub edge and pulls his hands away. He stays close to say, “It’s okay to cry. You’re safe now. It’s okay.”

Bucky stands and steps out of the tub. He bends over to lift Natasha. She’s no longer shaking but her body is limp in his hands. He carries her to the less cluttered bed and lays her out. Steve is struck by how she looks more vulnerable here, naked and pale on the bed covers, than she did in the tub. Bucky pulls the covers across her and tucks them in under the edge of her body. He smooths her wet hair out over the pillow. Natasha watches him with bleary eyes and says nothing. When he stands and turns away, Steve sees a tear well up, pour itself out the corner of her eye, and roll down her wet skin. She draws her brow and cries silently into the pillow.

Bucky walks back into the bathroom. He strips out his clothes and adds them to the pile. He pulls on jeans and a t-shirt, both of which Natasha bought him in Hong Kong, and squeezes his hair out on the carpet. Bucky retrieves the empty vial from the floor and throws it in the bathroom. He twists the pipe jutting out of the shower wall until it stops spraying.

“We need trash bags and cat litter,” he says to Sam and Steve, who are standing halfway between the bed and the bathroom. “I’ll stay with her.”

Steve nods and they leave without a word.

 

* * *

 

“Hamburg,” Natasha says, voice hushed.

“Germany?” Steve is sitting at the edge of the bed. She’s fully dressed now and slowly pulling on a new pair of boots. She slept for just under thirteen hours before waking up and insisting they leave immediately.

“Yeah.”

“That’s where Radziewicz’s lab is?”

“No. But it’s our next stop.”

“For intel.”

“Yes.”

Steve watches her run her fingers through her hair and pull it back behind her neck into a tie.

“Hey Nat,” Steve keeps his voice low to match hers, “Any luck finding Fury?”

Natasha stills. She looks at Steve for a second too long, “No.”

Steve nods at the floor, “So when do we leave?”

“Two hours.”

“Civilian plane?”

“Yep.”

“Thank you for all this, Nat,” Steve looks at his shoes, “It’s been a lot easier since you started— since you took over for Maria. With the mission planning.”

Natasha’s jaw crooks to one side and her lips twist. She nods.

“It’s crazy. How easy it is for you.”

Natasha’s eyes close off.

“You and him just go out somewhere and a couple hours later you have all the answers,” something prickles up the backs of Steve’s arms. He rolls his shoulders.

“Yeah,” Natasha’s voice sounds the note like a warning.

Steve glares at her without meaning to, “I just want to know what’s going on.”

“I don’t think you actually do,” Natasha pulls herself off the bed and walks away.

 

* * *

 

Steve sits next to Sam on the plane and tries not to think. He practices watching a single cloud as soon as it enters his window’s view, tracking it slowly across the sky until it slips off the other side. 

When the sun goes down he looks straight ahead at Natasha’s head in front of him. It barely moves. Steve gets up to walk to the bathroom at the far end of the plane when he knows it’s occupied so he can walk all the way to the bathroom at the front. On his way back to his seat he sees that she’s asleep. Sam stands up to let him back into his seat. Steve has to duck his head to step under the overhead compartments. He sees Natasha’s boot resting against Bucky’s between their seats. He’s used the same system with her on past missions. If one person needs to sleep, the other maintains a point of contact so they can quickly signal trouble without a sound.  

He nods at Sam when they sit down but can’t think of anything to say. Steve goes back to watching clouds.

 

* * *

 

Hamburg feels more foreign than it should. This isn’t the longest Steve has been in the field but it’s by far the most traveling he’s done over the course of a couple weeks.  

They stay in a one-story hotel near the airport. 

“We’ll head in tomorrow afternoon,” Natasha starts laying out munitions on one of the beds.

“If you need a day to rest—” Steve tosses a few of his own ammunition magazines into the pile.

“I don’t.”

 

* * *

 

Steve wakes up to discover that Bucky is gone. His bag is still propped up by the door so Steve pulls on his shoes and cracks open the door. He spots Bucky immediately, crouching in the parking lot in front of a small fire. 

Steve steps out and shuts the door behind him. “Hey,” he calls to Bucky.

“Hey.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Cooking the sausages,” Bucky calls back.

“Oh.” Steve watches him for a minute. He glances over at the management office some thirty yards away and then back at Bucky.

Bucky is spearing the sausages onto a long, thin knife, and holding it over the flame with his left hand. He’s rotating the knife handle slowly.

Steve goes back into the hotel room and announces, “Bucky’s making sausages.” The sound of his voice instantly wakes up both Sam and Natasha.

Five minutes later, the three of them push back out the door and into the parking lot. Sam and Natasha sit down cross-legged, accepting knives loaded with sausages from Bucky. Steve moves their rental car between the management office window and Bucky’s fire.

He pulls a bag from the trunk before rejoining them. Steve sits down on the asphalt to Bucky’s left and tugs open the bag. He upends it and oranges come rolling out into his lap. One rolls free, across the parking lot, and into a ditch by the road. Steve lets it go.

Sam brought out all of their canteens and he hands one to Steve now. Steve props the container up against his leg and takes an orange in two hands. He squeezes it, crushing it to pulp and catching the juice in the canteen.

“Wow, okay. Didn’t know this was a manliness contest,” Sam says through a smirk.

“You got a better way to do this?” Steve grunts as he squeezes another orange.

“Come on Steve. Nat makes us delicious Amazonian berry smoothies like it ain’t shit,” Sam points at Natasha and both Bucky and Natasha snicker, “and you can’t figure out how to juice an orange without showing off.”

“I mean,” Steve squeezes a fifth orange into the canteen and hands it back to Sam, “I could but I think this is faster.”

Sam takes a sip and shakes his head, “Not as good as the berries.”

Steve shakes his head back at him, “How can I compete with that?”

“You’re right,” Sam grimaces with mock sympathy, “Always coming in second place.”

Natasha smacks Sam’s arm lightly. The color is returning to her face already. Steve makes four canteens of juice and four more when everyone asks for seconds. 

 

* * *

 

The Hydra base near Hamburg is a communications outpost. Sam and Steve cover the perimeter while Bucky and Natasha slip inside. They’re dressed in full Hydra gear, complete with rank embroidery on their shoulders.  

Steve watches a guard post from behind and keeps a careful eye on the panel of lights and screens through the window. He crouches behind the post and listens to the guard answer a phone call before bashing open the door and knocking him unconscious with a single blow. Steve and Sam have no way to communicate with the other two while they’re inside. Steve was supposed to watch the exits to the east and north but he gave up that post almost immediately.

Steve cracks open the panel and pulls it back to expose the wiring underneath. The alarm layout is similar to a SHIELD security system and Steve gambles that the philosophy is the same. He watches the screens until he sees Natasha and Bucky walking by under a monitor labeled _Sector 4, Quadrant 3._  

He finds the green lights connected to circuits neatly labeled _Sector 1,_ _Sector 2,_ and _Sector 3_ and slices the connecting wires with a pocket knife. The lights go red and an electric alarm begins to bleat from the dashboard. 

Steve slices the insulation off the ends of the wires and twists them back together. The alarm stops as soon as the circuit is complete again. Steve watches the screens. Agents in black clothes with black helmets run in and out of frame. Everyone who isn’t dressed for a fight empties into the halls, headed south. Before long, Steve can see agents crowding into offices in Sector 4. Bucky and Natasha are standing in the corner. Natasha leans against the wall and nods at a man to her left. She looks disinterested.

Steve steps back out of the guard post, wedges the door closed, and resumes his post.

Natasha and Bucky re-emerge under an hour later and they’re not alone. They walk straight to the parking lot, their predetermined signal that everything is going to plan, and get in their rental car. The man walking behind them slips into the backseat. They pull out through the gates and turn onto the road.

Steve sits up from a prone sniper’s position. He starts dismantling his gun.

“Hey,” Sam’s quiet voice behind him.

“Hey,” Steve turns to look back at him, “Did you fly over here?”

“No, I sprinted. Who do you think I am? Captain America?”

Steve gives him a small smile. “So can you fly us back to the hotel or should I look for a bus schedule.”

Sam shakes his head and purses his lips, “Man, that joke is weak.”

“So says the oatmeal enthusiast.”

Sam laughs at that. They walk toward the woods so Sam can take off out of sight.

“Looked like they had company,”Steve says.

“Yeah.”

“You think we should be worried about that?”

Sam shrugs, “Guess we’ll find out.”

 


	15. Chapter 15

 

* * *

  
_The asset may discover that the mission objective does not align with the mission intent. In this case, he will independently adjust course to achieve the mission intent._   
  


* * *

 

Five in the morning. Sitting around another parking lot campfire because they don’t seem to be a problem. The Hydra agent sits next to Bucky and smiles at the knife full of sausages. Bucky talks to him in German and the man replies in kind.  

Natasha had introduced him as a Hydra defector last night. He slept on the floor and gave Steve tight smiles whenever they made eye contact. 

Natasha, Steve, and Sam make halting conversation. They mostly watch the fire and glance up at the two men on the other side of it. Steve makes orange juice with his hands and no one jokes about it. At one point, Bucky points at the man’s legs and asks something. The man laughs and asks a question in return. Bucky nods and the man laughs harder. He eventually nods and extends his hand for Bucky to shake.

After sitting around for what feels like a polite period of time, Steve takes the pile of Bucky’s knives back into their hotel bathroom to be washed. Natasha follows him.

“What are they talking about?”

Natasha looks at Steve’s eyes in the bathroom mirror, “Bucky asked if they could switch pants.”

“What?”

“Well,” Natasha shrugs and pours a dollop of green hotel shampoo onto her palm, “He does need another pair. And those SHIELD-issue ones are the best you can get.”

“What else are they talking about?” Steve hands her the first knife.

“How to get him out of here.”

“He’s really defecting?”

“Yeah.”

“Where will he go?”

“Bucky was talking about these ex-Hydra cells in Berlin, doing their own clean up work. He’d be safest if he joined them.” Natasha lathers the shampoo in her hands and carefully slicks the first blade.

“How does he know about those?”

“The cells?”

“Yeah.”

“Probably been sent to wipe them out before.” Natasha rinses the knife and sets it aside. She holds out her hand and Steve gives her another.

Steve watches her wash the oil from the blade.

“I don’t understand how he can shoot a woman between the eyes before she can even go for her gun and welcome this guy like he’s family.”

“He came willingly. And isn’t this what you’d prefer?”

Yeah, it’s just—” Steve hands her another knife, “It worries me.”

“He’s not Hydra Steve.”

Steve meets her eyes in the mirror.

“Bucky’s not Hydra. Not now.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it would have been easy to let me die—”

“But a bulletproof cover to keep you alive.”

Natasha rinses the knife in her hand with her eyes down. “It’s not that simple Steve. Not like holding your gun to someone’s head and deciding not to pull the trigger. He fought for it. Made me fight for it.”

“Maybe it’s easy for him. He’s done that before.”

Natasha looks up sharply.

“For me. Made me fight for it when I was sick.”

Natasha is completely still, studying Steve’s face in the mirror. Steve drops her eyes.

“Like that? How sick were you?” Her voice is soft.

“We didn’t have pain killers,” Steve tells the bathroom counter.

“I know what it feels like,” Natasha says eventually, “To owe someone a debt. It’s something you decide for yourself,” Natasha points at her chest, “You keep your own ledger, tally your own score. He owes you. He wants to fix that.”

“And how is he going to do that?”

“He wants you to believe the same story he does—”

Steve cuts her off, “Not going to happen.”

“—and if not that, then at least get you to walk away.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Then maybe you have your answer as to why he suddenly has a soft spot for Hydra defectors.” Natasha sets the last of the knives in the pile and pushes past Steve out into the room.

“And maybe that’s just to make him seem sympathetic. So we don’t question him.”

“Maybe,” Natasha’s voice is flat. Her back is to Steve as she sets the knives by Bucky’s things.

“You’re a better judge of these things Nat. I trust you here. I want to know what you think.”

She turns back to face Steve, shoulders tense, “He’s not Hydra.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky switches pants with the agent. He has to cuff the bottoms so they don’t drag on the ground. He mutters something in German as he folds the fabric and both Natasha and the agent laugh. They give the man the keys to their rental car and he waves out the side window as he pulls away. 

“So, Radziewicz’s lab is gone.” Natasha starts debriefing as soon as the team is alone again.

“Permanently?”

“Yeah, used to be in Texas. It was shut down in the 90s and split into a hub and spoke model where the hub develops the methodology and the spokes implement it. So there are many spokes, over twenty that I heard about from that chatty guy,” she looks at Bucky and he nods.

“Thanks for the alarm, by the way,” Natasha adds, speaking to Steve, “You didn’t have to. But that helped.”

Steve nods, “So where’s the hub?”

“Near Hyderabad, India.” Natasha pauses, “There probably won’t be a box.”

“Might be something else,” Steve replies.

“That’s not a lot to go on.”

Steve says nothing.   


* * *

 

It’s a military flight this time. Steve walks back through the Hamburg airport, making beelines from the door to security and security to the gates. They’re not the only ones sitting in the terminal in combat gear with heavy bags. Steve can see the cargo plane with seats along the sides of the body through the terminal windows. Steve pulls ear plugs from his bag while they wait to board because the unmuffled rattle of an uninsulated plane will bother even him. 

They’re split up; Bucky and Sam sent to sit on one side and Steve and Natasha sent to the other. 

Steve waits until they’re in the air to pull out one of his ear plugs and ask Natasha, “How can you be so sure?”

“What?” she turns toward him, moving her ear closer to his mouth.

Steve keeps his voice low, “How can you be so sure that Hydra’s not still pulling the strings?”

“Because he played this like I would if I were working for Hydra, right up until South Africa. Show up hurt because he knows you want to help. Let you see him vulnerable and hurting. Help you without question. Telling you all along he just wants you to know the truth.”

Natasha shifts in her seat and brushes a stray wisp of hair behind her ear, “If it were me and I were working for Hydra, I’d let you protect me while I poisoned you with this story. But then when a complication got sick I’d have let her die. Because changing someone’s mind gets easier the fewer people you have around.”

“Maybe he did it to win you over.” Steve pulls back to look at her face, “Because you seem pretty convinced now.”

She shakes her head, “I’m good at my job. I know that I am not worth the risk. If I were him I would have let the only member of the team who specializes in emotional manipulation die a convenient death.”

Steve looks down at his hands. His eyes flick up and he sees Bucky watching him. They both blink away.

“It doesn’t line up,” Steve murmurs and Natasha leans in again, “I’ll give you that. It doesn’t make sense.”

“What happened?”

“He told me he got his start killing my handlers. That he wanted to protect me so he took them out one at a time. He said he figured out who was in charge and killed them too.” Steve can’t look at Natasha, can’t look at his hands, can’t look at Bucky. His eyes jump, brows furrow and he says, “He told me he killed my mother.”

Natasha says nothing.

“He said she was going to set me up for a real bad break. He said Erskine and Zola were busy with the war and they wanted to try something more permanent. To maim me. Give me a bum leg or crooked fingers or I don’t know what.” Steve swallows, “And my mother, or as he calls her, the woman that played my mother, was supposed to slip me a drug that would knock me out. So I’d wake up after the accident and remember nothing. Be angry at fate instead of angry at a person.” Steve adds, bitter taste in his mouth, “Try to rise above, not get revenge.”

He lets the words settle and tries to draw a single thread from his thoughts, “He said he couldn’t believe— that she would betray me. Not like that. So he killed her. And faked the telegram from the hospital saying she’d been sent to a TB sanatorium. And faked the one announcing her death too.”

Steve stops talking and lets the white noise of the plane wash. He draws a long breath through a closed throat.

“Why would he tell me that?” he finally asks.

Natasha’s head drops a little. She looks down and then up and across the row. Steve studies her studying Bucky.

“Why would he say things like that if he wants me to believe him?” Steve asks Natasha’s profile.

“I don’t know.”

“And you know what he said? He said ‘things got easier after your mother died, didn’t they?’” Steve waits for Natasha to look at him, “And they did. Things did get easier.” He searches her face, “What am I supposed to say to that?”

“I don’t know.” Natasha says. Her face is open and her eyes are quiet.

Steve looks back across the aisle and Bucky looks away. He counts the squares between the supports that criss-cross the plane’s ceiling and then he counts them again. The light outside the plane fades and the LED bulbs inside take over.

Steve gets better at sitting for hours. His body doesn’t get stiff, not the way it used to. But his mind still expects it and tenses his muscles to brace against the ache.

Natasha sits silently next to him. Neither sleeps and their boots don’t touch.

“You have a way of head butting obstacles,” she tells him when his mind is a million miles away. Steve blinks back to the present and leans toward her as she speaks again, “And when you can’t budge them you wait for them to try to move you. That’s a hard line, Steve. A lot of your missions have no objective; they never end. And when you get tired you let them take you down.”

“What do you—” Steve tries to ask but Natasha continues.

“You don’t know how to back up.” She leans back and looks up at him, “There’s a difference between walking away from a fight and backing up from it. I know you think ‘never back down’ is what bravery looks like. Just think about taking the long way around this mountain, okay?”

Steve’s brows draw together, “Look Nat, we do things differently. I appreciate that. I respect you. But I’m not as flexible as you are.”

Natasha’s eyes flicker. Her head tips back and it reminds Steve of Bucky when he’s hurting. “I care about you,” she says, “Don’t throw your life away. No bullshit, no vague words. This is me, Natasha, saying this to you, Steve. This isn’t about the rest of the world or what you stand for,” she brushes briskly to the side with one hand, “You’re a person. You matter. Not as Captain America, but as Steve. I care about Steve.”

Steve nods, unsure of what to say.

“You’ve got three people trying to save your ass and a world that doesn’t give a shit if you throw it away. The choice is yours in the end. Be sure you’re the one making it.”

“I need answers,” Steve looks straight ahead, catching Bucky looking away again, “I’ll do what I need to do to get them.”

 

* * *

 

A car picks them up at the airport and drives them northeast for an hour and a half. 

“Man those loud planes kill my ears,” Sam says to no one in particular.

“Yeah?” Bucky responds, his tone more polite than interested.

“Doesn’t it get to you too?”

“Not really.”

“Don’t you have hypersensitive ears?”

Bucky laughs at that, “I can hear well. That doesn’t mean they’re sensitive.” He adds with a smile, “I have tough ears.”

“I don’t,” Steve joins in, “The plane noise bothers me.”

“Hey don’t say that too loud!” Sam hushes him, “Or they’ll know the golden boy has an achilles heel!”

Now Steve laughs, “My one great weakness. Plane noise.”

Sam hushes him dramatically from the back seat, swinging an arm over the seat back to signal silence. 

Bucky has the driver pull over in front of Ratnadeep Super Market. He picks up a plastic basket with a wire handle in his metal hand. He wears a jacket in public but doesn’t bother with a glove these days. They buy enough dry food to last them a week and a couple days worth of fresh fruits and vegetables.

The driver drops them on the edge of a village and they walk straight off the road. Natasha leads them through a field, over a thick bunch of shrubs, and through another field. They set up camp for the night. 

 

* * *

 

“Okay, time for a cook off,” Sam holds up a frying pan. They’re all gathered around a freshly built fire, waiting for the sun to rise and the water for instant coffee to boil. 

“What??” Bucky looks around incredulously, “Where did that come from? Have you been carrying a frying pan in your bag?”

“Hey, when ya’ll get flagged by customs for all the rifle bits you’ve got squirreled away in your bags, nobody’s gonna look twice at a frying pan.” 

“Wait,” Bucky cocks his head, smiling in spite of himself, “Are you saying you brought it along as a weapon?”

Sam nods solemnly, “A weapon of culinary destruction.”

Bucky shakes his head and Steve laughs. Bucky looks over at him, “Yeah, you would think that was funny.”

“Hey, less talk, more cooking.”

Sam pulls a package of veggie sausages from the grocery bag, “They even have Nat’s brand out here.”

Bucky cuts open a package and starts to slide the sausages down his knife. “Hey, you two need to turn around. This is a blind taste test.”

Steve and Natasha obediently pivot around so their backs are to the fire. 

“The texture will be different,” Sam says, rustling around behind Steve’s back.

“I think you mean the texture will be _better_ , when it’s cooked over a _fire_ ,” Bucky retorts.

They trade insults while they cook, falling silent when they pull the sausages from the fire and cut them into pieces for Steve and Natasha. Bucky walks around to face them, “Keep your eyes closed,” he says.

“Alright, hold out both hands,” Bucky instructs. He sets a small piece of sausage in Steve’s left hand, “This is the first one.” He sets another in Steve’s right, “This is the second. You can eat them in whichever order you want. Don’t announce your pick.”

Steve eats the one of the right first. He chews for a while, swallows, and waits. Then he eats the one on the left. 

“Okay now hold up the hand of the one you liked best,” Bucky says. Steve holds up his right hand.

“What! Split vote!” Bucky cries out, “Steve for you, Nat for me.”

Steve opens his eyes just as Natasha lowers her left hand. 

Bucky holds out his hand and Natasha high fives it. He shakes his head at Steve with a half smile. His eyes are bright in the firelight.

Sam walks around the fire to thump Steve on the back, “Me and Captain America. Doing it the American way.” Sam waves his hand at Bucky, “None of this Russian, cooking over the fire shit.”

Natasha laughs, “They don’t have a lot of veggie sausage in Russia.”

 

* * *

 

They wait until the sun has fully risen to set out. They walk just under half an hour before Natasha points to a long, low building with white-washed walls on the horizon, “That’s it.” 

“Must be underground,” Steve muses.

“I don’t think so,” Natasha replies, “Not this time.” 

They draw closer and Steve can see children running around in the field between the low building and another, smaller building behind it that looks like a dormitory. There are no roads leading to the compound. The group approaches from the south. Steve can see chalkboards and desks through the windows. There are no guards, or adults of any kind, in sight.

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Please heed the new content tags for Violence by Children Toward Other Children and Adults, and Discussion of Suicide.

 

* * *

  
 _The asset’s sense of identity is an extension of his mission. In the event of a mission shift, he must use learned stabilization techniques to reduce or compartmentalize the resulting psychological impact.  
_  

* * *

 

Natasha walks straight through the main doors. They creak on their hinges and swing slightly crooked in the frame. She walks with her gun drawn and pointed at the floor. The building is clearly a school. Hallways branch off to the left and right and a large cafeteria space can be seen through the doorway ahead of them. 

She doesn’t call out but she isn’t silent either. Steve and Sam flank her with Bucky covering them from behind. A small girl comes shuffling out from around a corner and looks up at them. The dark brown of her eyes stands out starkly against the whites. She pauses but doesn’t flinch.

Natasha lowers her gun further and looks down at the girl. Neither speaks.

Eventually, the girl continues walking. She says something in a language Steve can’t understand, as if talking to the hallway.

A door clicks open as soon as she speaks. Natasha’s gun rises sharply. Two men step out of a room twenty feet down the hall. One speaks to the girl and she replies. No one moves while the girl crosses the space and walks through the open door. The shorter of the two men shuts the door behind her. He has a shaved head and cauliflower ears.

The shorter of the two starts down the hallway first. Neither man is holding a gun and their jeans and t-shirts look entirely unthreatening.

Steve knows Natasha won’t fire until she has to and expectation charges the air. They’re standing too close for comfort now, looking the group over warily.

“Can we help you?” The taller man asks in perfect English.

“Hydra strike team. This facility is supposed to be in shut down. I need to see your IDs,” Natasha says bluntly.

“Oh,” the taller man looks at the shorter one, “We’re still in the third wave. Staying here with the students until ground transport can get out here.” He’s fumbling in his back pocket as he talks.

Steve hears Bucky cock his gun a split second before he sees the grenade. It hits the ground at Natasha’s feet and explodes in a burst of light and sound. Steve goes blind and his balance is shot. His ears ring, deafening the world.

One terrifying moment inside his body with no way out. Hands on the floor. Gasping around the pain in his head.

Steve’s eyes recover in just over one second. It must have been a stun grenade. Another four will pass before Natasha and Sam can see again. Steve goes for his shield and two rough hands on his arm stop him in his tracks. Steve pulls back hard but the taller man is strong, as strong as Bucky. 

Steve throws his weight back to take him down and another strong arm slides around his neck. Steve grits his teeth and tenses against the pressure on his throat. The man behind him lurches forward and a metal hand shoves his arm loose. Four bodies fall forward in a tangle. Steve hears Natasha start to grapple with the taller man before her vision has returned. After a struggle they manage to get both men on the ground.

“Did you think we wouldn't recognize you?” the taller man spits angrily. 

The shorter one tries to keep his head down and Bucky rips it back. He pulls open his mouth with metal fingers and the man makes a pained sound. Bucky rips a strip from the man’s own shirt and shoves it in his mouth.

“Gag him,” Bucky says to Natasha as he lets the shorter man slump back to the floor, “They’ll take cyanide if you don’t.”

 

* * *

 

Natasha says she has a few questions to ask the men on the floor, so Steve and Sam head for the dormitory across the field. There are no children outside now. Steve’s boots brush the grass and his head feels like it’s floating an inch above his neck. 

The building is a converted barn that looks like it’s been renovated and expanded several times. Sam opens the door and steps into the shadow. The long room is lined with beds and children standing at attention, as if prepared for a military inspection.

Steve freezes in the doorway. His eyes jump along the row, down to the floor, and up from face to face. Many are wearing dirty, old clothing. Some are barefoot. All are watching Steve with wide, open eyes. The thin sunlight through the windows seems to soak into the dark, low ceiling instead of illuminating the room.

“We’re gonna get you guys out of here,” Steve manages, voice betraying him.

“Yes Captain!” the children reply in unison.

Steve looks down at the child on his immediate left, “You know me.”

“Everyone knows Captain America. Son of Hydra,” the rest of the children suddenly join in in unison, as if this is a learned recitation, “Be strong and all will be rewarded. Duty first for the glory of Hydra and all will live immortal.”

Steve shakes his head. His stomach is a rock and his lungs are rebelling. “I’m not immortal,” comes out of his mouth. The back of his throat is sour.

Steve starts walking down the aisle, tripping into a run to reach the door at the far end faster. 

There are child-sized guns hung up on the walls. Steve hits the far wall and stops himself with a hand on the door. A child sitting in the corner catches Steve’s eye and when he turns to look at him, Steve sees the restraints.

Cuffs around his wrists, ankles, and neck. He looks back at Steve with a blank face.

Steve approaches him immediately, falling forward to get to him faster. He locates the switch to release the restraints before he’s even reached the chair. Steve hits the switch and the cuffs retract. The boy stays motionless. He’s wearing a sleeveless blue shirt with a faded illustration of He-Man in the middle.

“Can you stand?” Steve kneels to see eye-to-eye with the boy.

The boy scoots forward and stands without a word.

“Are you—” Steve’s throat catches like it’s full of sand, “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” The boy’s eyes are calm and his breathing is easy. Steve looks him over, there are bruises where the cuffs used to be.

“Captain?” The boy holds his head too still, looking more like an adult than a child, “Where do you find the bravery to complete your mission? Were you ever afraid that you wouldn’t come back?"

“Come back—” Steve repeats faintly.

“Come back from the ice.”

Steve jerks back, standing as he retreats to the door. The boy watches him as he pushes into the next room. Quiet eyes and lifted chin. 

The door only opens a few inches before it hits a soft obstacle. Steve pushes harder until the door opens wide enough for him to pass through. Another room full of beds and children at attention. Steve steps to the side and sees the body that was blocking the door. He reaches down and brushes the woman’s hair from her face. An obvious cyanide suicide. Her skin is still warm.

Sam has pushed inside and walked to the center of the room. “Where are the rest of the adults?” Sam asks a girl standing halfway down the row.

“Most evacuated two weeks ago, sir. We’re waiting for ground transport to come for us.”

“It was supposed to come days ago,” the boy next to her adds. She lashes out, lightning quick, and smashes her fist into his face. He recoils, head snapping back, then drops his gaze and stares at the ground.

“What was that for?” Sam asks her, a softened rebuke.

“We are weak because the food supplies are low. No excuses for disobedience, sir.”

“No I mean,” Sam shakes his head, pointing at the boy, “Why did you hit him?”

“We are our own best teachers,” the sound of dozens of voices in chorus booms through the room as the other children join in, “We help each other withstand and obey. For the glory of Hydra.”

Steve looks at the children in front of him. Most appear to be Indian but some look Chinese, some Korean, others defy ethnic categorization. He catches sight of a red-haired boy at the far end of the aisle a moment before he speaks. He calls out in Russian with a wide grin. The taller boy next to him promptly strikes him on the back of his head. He makes a choked sound and resumes his stance, feet spread, arms at his sides, chin up, eyes straight ahead.

Natasha blows past Steve before he can react. He spins to see Bucky standing in the doorway as well. Natasha stoops and picks the boy up. He grins, surprised and pleased and loops his hands around her neck. She says something to him in Russian and her voice is uneven. He ducks his head against her neck and pulls her close. He whispers something back and Natasha inhales quickly, eyes on the ceiling. Natasha starts walking back down the row and blinks twice. Her face contorts and the first tear rolls down her cheek.

“We’re taking them with us,” she says to Steve. Voice steady in spite of the tears. “All of them. I’m going outside to call Maria and get a helicopter out here.” Natasha walks back through the doorway with the boy in her arms, adding, “A fleet of helicopters.”

Natasha’s actions seem to have put the children at ease. They relax a little and some sit down on the edges of their beds.

“Captain?” A small boy with sharp eyes and thick hair steps into the aisle, “Can I show you my book?”

Steve steps forward. He walks to the boy’s bed and watches him pull a drawer out from under his bed. It’s neatly organized; nothing overlaps. A small stack of books next to a row of pencils and a cluster of neatly arranged toy soldiers. He lifts a thin paper book, bound with staples, and sits on his bed. Steve gingerly sits down next to him. The boy flicks it open, past pages with black line art that he’s carefully colored in with crayons. He stops close to the end of the book and shifts the picture toward Steve.

Steve lifts the book and reads the large text printed along the bottom, _Captain America performed for the United States military to protect Hydra. He pretends because he is brave. Color in the Captain’s shield with red, white, and blue._ Above the text a familiar drawing of a monkey on a unicycle holding a shield and an umbrella grabs Steve by the throat. He stares down at the image—it even has a star on it’s chest—until the boy reaches over and turns the page for him.

A sketch of Steve shaking hands with the Avengers.

_Learning to pretend is important for everyone. We all have to pretend sometimes to complete our missions. Can you color in the pretenders in this picture?_

On the opposing page: a full body portrait of Steve in uniform, smiling.

_Hydra will always reward its soldiers. Captain America was brought back after a terminal mission for his bravery and loyalty to Hydra. He leads by example. Let’s all do our duty like Captain America._

Steve looks up at the boy. His face is numb and he can’t tell what it shows.

“I haven’t finished it yet. But you’re my most favorite out of all of them,” he says earnestly.

Steve’s numb fingers flip quickly through the rest of the book. Drawings of agents in combat gear, sketches of scientists in their labs, action scenes from WWII, and countless others. Steve freezes on a page that shows two masked agents, a man and a woman. The boy has colored the woman’s hair red and the man’s hair black. The caption reads, _Some agents serve for many years undercover. Only the strongest can bring glory to Hydra through these difficult missions. Can you arm these agents for a Level III Infiltration?_ Steve looks back up at the image to see carefully drawn guns and concealed weapons added to the edges of the agents’ clothes in a child’s shaky hand.

He hands the book back to the boy, “Thank you for showing me.”

The boy grins back at him and ducks his head shyly. 

Steve stands and sees a Captain America poster hung on the wall above the boy’s bed, obscured by four mounted assault weapons with scaled down grips. There is a red, white, and blue shield painted on the butt of a rifle hanging near the ceiling. The paint is so worn that the black of the weapon streaks through where the colors have chipped away. 

Steve walks the end of the row and asks the girl by the door, “Where are the oldest children?”

“Upstairs.”

“Thank you.”

Steve pushes out the door and hears Sam following close behind. He finds the narrow staircase at the end of a dim hallway and takes them two at a time. On the second floor, Steve opens the door and finds himself in another room full of children standing at attention. The ceilings are higher and the beds have a bit more room on either side.

The children watch him exactly like the ones below, but their eyes are harder, less reverential. They hold their chins up and their chests out.

“Do any of you know where the main office is?”

No one moves or responds.

“I’m looking for a locked metal box. About this big,” Steve indicates a small rectangle with his hands. 

Again, silence.

Steve steps closer to the girl on his right. Her long black hair is braided down her back. “Do you know—” She draws a knife and brings it to the space between his face and hers. Steve freezes.

“Is this a test?” Her eyes are calm and her shoulders tensed.

“No, this is not a test.” Steve lifts two empty hands to signal his intentions.

“Then why are you here.” Her voice is cold.

“To help you.”

She snorts a derisive sound and pushes the knife to Steve’s throat. Not enough pressure to cut him but he can feel the bite of the blade. Steve holds still.

She studies his eyes for a second, “You’re lying.”

Steve stares back at her. She can’t be older than thirteen.

“What is your mission?”

“I’m here to help—”

She moves quickly to grab Steve’s collar and pull him down. He could pull away but he doesn’t want to. He lets her get right in his face to snarl, “I said _what is your mission_.”

Steve says nothing.

A tense pause and her head stiffens.

“Back up,” Bucky’s voice comes from behind her. She releases Steve’s collar and leans back. Steve straightens up to see Bucky with a knife at her throat and a hand on her shoulder. “Drop it.” His voice is not threatening, but firm. She drops the knife.

“Tell me where the office is,” Bucky speaks loud enough for the rest of the children in the room to hear.

She doesn’t reply. Her angry eyes stay on Steve’s face.

“Didn’t Hydra teach you your greatest weapon is your captor’s sympathy?” Bucky asks quietly.

The girl laughs at that, “And my greatest weakness that I assume they’ll be merciful. You have no sympathy. If I tell you, you’ll kill me.”

“I don’t want to kill you. But I won’t hesitate if you pull another knife out.”

Steve’s stomach is churning at how flat their voices are. His hands are on his shield and nausea sweeps through him again and again.

“By your hand, it would be an honor,” she spits. She jerks her head forward into Bucky’s knife, just enough to draw a thin line of blood to the surface.

“You want out? I’ll help you get out.” Bucky speaks to her like an adult, negotiating.

“Death is the only way out.”

“It’s not.” 

“The fuck do you know about it,” she sneers over her shoulder, her voice dropping it’s authoritative tone for an annoyed one.

“I got out. I can help you get out too.”

“Bullshit.”

Bucky’s voice softens, “Might as well try.”

She shakes her head a little. The blood on her neck has dripped down to her collarbone.

“You can always start over.”

Her voice drops and its pitch rises. It sounds more natural when she says, “Already tried. This is what I am now. This is what I do.”

“So do it for someone else,” Bucky abruptly puts his knife away, “Try again.”

Her eyes drop to the floor and she says nothing.

“Where’s the office?” Bucky asks, voice low.

“Through the freezers in the kitchen.”

“Thank you.”

Bucky turns and heads for the stairs. Steve follows him, turning around as he walks, “Sam, can you stay here and make sure—” Steve waves his hands and Sam nods.

 

* * *

 

The walk-in freezers are nearly empty. The hidden panel in the back wall is easy enough to find and just as easy to pry off. Steve opens the well insulated door and steps into the windowless office space. There’s a messy desk with a single chair. A mug of half-drunk tea sits on the edge, next to a corded telephone. The back wall is lined with filing cabinets covered in papers. 

Bucky starts in the lower left corner of the room. He feels along the panelling, tapping and listening.

“Do you know this office?” Steve asks.

“No.”

“Can I help you look?”

“No.”

Steve pulls in the door to the freezer so it sits open just a crack. The cold air wisps in through the gap and chills his feet through his boots. He stands still and looks at the papers stacked on the desk. Many are laid out like SHIELD mission reports. A red pamphlet at the bottom of the stack catches Steve’s eye. He takes a step forward and tugs it out.

_Raising Agents in the Image of Hydra_

Steve opens the pamphlet and reads the list printed across the inside.

_The asset communicates to gather information, build rapport, and organize action. He does not use language to express himself._

_The asset is constantly assessing his next move. He lives in the present moment only, where either death or victory may lie around the next corner._

_The asset keeps a clear path to his nearest weapon._

_For the asset, fatigue is weakness and thus, intolerable. He will decide his body’s limits._

_The asset is patient. He must be so well tuned to the parameters of the mission that waiting, planning, or observing are just as satisfying as acting. However, he is driven by an instinctive urgency and will take the shortest path forward._

_When the asset must jump, he will jump immediately. If he must, he will jump without a landing point in sight. For it is better to fall and take measures to guard against injury or death, than linger and meet certain death in the hands of a pursuing foe._

_The asset understands the difference between a mistake and a tactical shift. Mistakes cannot be corrected._

_The asset will reflexively disguise pain and discomfort if he is not gravely wounded or otherwise incapacitated. He protects the condition of his body and mind as important intelligence that could be easily exploited by the enemy._

_If the asset is incapacitated, he will retreat and tend to his wounds. He will treat the wounds of his teammates—or seek their assistance with his own wounds, as the case may be—before pursuing outside medical assistance. The asset will prioritize the safety of the group and the preservation of its cover in pursuing such assistance._

_The asset can perceive individuals holistically, or catalogue them as strengths and weaknesses, fears and aspirations, and act on this intelligence to advance the mission objective._

_The asset must be most comfortable leading. It is not beneficial for him to routinely depend on another for guidance or reassurance. Ideally, the asset will select a superior who is easily manipulated or manipulative; perceived equals will threaten the asset’s sense of independence._

_The asset understands that trust is a calculation. He will always behave such that the expected value of his actions is mission success._

_The asset must understand the value of a life. Though he can kill without question when ordered to do so, he must take measures to keep his teammates alive, as they may eventually prove valuable._

_The asset shares intelligence but withholds analysis. He will interpret information independently and form a set of objectives, separate from the group’s plan of action, which he will only share with teammates if mission beneficial._

_The asset will consult teammates only if the interaction benefits the mission. He does not seek advice to improve his own situational analysis._

_The asset understands that emotions are a tool and a weapon._

_The asset may discover that the mission objective does not align with the mission intent. In this case, he will independently adjust course to achieve the mission intent._

_The asset’s sense of identity is an extension of his mission. In the event of a mission shift, he must use learned stabilization techniques to reduce or compartmentalize the resulting psychological impact._

_The asset is loyal to the mission first, and as he exists as an extension of the mission, he is loyal only to his own conscience. Thus, training is critical; there is no way to unmake a made man._

_The asset has a code. Men without a code are weak-minded and indecisive. When implementing the code, the asset uses judgement and is sensitive to circumstance._

_The asset understands he is valuable. He will not take his own life._

_The asset believes he holds his own destiny in his hands._

Steve looks up. The room is too small and Steve can’t breathe. He looks at Bucky, who has pulled out the bottom drawer of one of the cabinets, leaned inside, and started working on something that sounds like a safe lock.

Steve tries to tell him he needs to go outside. He tries to sit down. He tries to drop the paper. But his body isn’t taking requests. He stands rooted to the spot until Bucky emerges from the cabinet with a small wooden box in hand. He sets it on the ground next to the desk without looking up at Steve.

Bucky pries off the lid with a short, thick knife and dumps it on its side. A stack of birth certificates from different countries fan out across the floor and a slim metal box falls on top. Bucky grabs the box and stands. He pauses when he sees Steve’s face, then pushes the door open, “Let’s go, I can hear the first helicopter.”

Steve follows him out. He slips the pamphlet inside his jacket as they walk.

 

* * *

 

“You swept the buildings?” Steve yells over the helicopter’s blades chopping the air as it lands. 

“Yeah,” Sam yells back

“This is everyone?”

“Everyone we could find.”

There are nearly a hundred children gathered in the field between the buildings. 

Sam and Natasha help about thirty of the youngest children into the military helicopter and signal the pilot. He ascends immediately, tilting to one side as he repositions and flies south. 

“Should we burn the buildings?” Bucky asks from over Steve’s shoulder.

Steve is slow to respond. “No.”

Another helicopter arrives shortly after the first departs and the group standing in the field shrinks by half. Natasha signals the pilot and the children shield their eyes against the dust rising in the wind.

Steve waits until the drone of the machine’s blades has faded. He steps away from the group and heads for the back of the dormitory. He tries to lean against the wall and hits the ground instead. 

Wrists absorbing the impact, knees bruising on the dirt. Steve stares down at the green and brown. He breathes in the space above his sternum, shallow breaths in and out. Nausea pulls his ribs in and down. Steve coughs to keep from vomiting. He bends his arms and they start to shake. He straightens them again.

“Do you see yourself in them?” Bucky’s voice from behind him. Steve curls away from it, resting his head on the ground. “I do,” he continues.

Bucky crouches against the building. He’s barely two feet from Steve’s shoulder. Steve wants to pull away but he won’t let himself.

“You see how perfectly it all fits together? Hydra is immortal and so are you.”

Steve says nothing. He tries to breathe in.

“You remember when you asked me I was ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death? And I said no?” Bucky’s voice is quick, like he knows they’re running out of time, “I’ve always been following that kid from Brooklyn. Because you don’t want anybody following Captain America, Steve. Not like this.” 

Steve hears Bucky settle onto the ground. His boots scuff the dirt in front of him.

“If we could go back, I would just end it. I never thought it would get this bad.”

Steve curls tighter, dragging his forehead against the dirt. A rock nicks his skin and he settles against its sharp tip.

“And I thought about it. When you were dead. I tried, like the girl in there, to get it done by someone else’s hand. But it’s hard. To die. You know that better than anyone. And my heart wasn’t in it. I fought so hard to live, it just felt like— a waste.” Bucky is quiet for a moment. Steve’s breathing starts to hitch, his chest is burning. “But you’re back now and I’m glad I’m here. Been a long time since I— I know it’s selfish, but I thought, maybe I could finally get some peace. If I just told you everything.”

The first sob rips out of Steve’s chest. The sound hits the ground and echoes around to his ears. Steve’s shoulders shake and his eyes well up. He punches the ground and bites his lips. 

“Even if you don’t believe me,” Bucky continues, voice quiet and slowing down, “Just knowing that you know. That’s enough. That you can believe the truth when you’re ready. When you’re done ripping up these labs. I’m glad I was around to start you down the path.”

Steve’s body shakes, forcing the air out and out. His lungs scream at him for oxygen and he grips the grass with gloved hands. Steve gasps a rough breath. It sounds like he’s drowning. He hears Bucky stand and walk away.

Steve wants to roar at the ground. He fists his fingers into his hair and pulls, bites his tongue until he tastes copper instead. His body seethes with things he won’t put words to, sensation like poison in his veins.

Steve cries until his body stops demanding it. He sits back on his heels and looks at his hands. He wipes his face on his sleeve and walks back toward the children. He keeps his head down until he hears, “Captain!” and looks up at a little girl who’s stepped away from the crowd. 

Steve walks right up to her and kneels at her feet.

She lifts the edge of her shirt, exposing her hipbone. There’s a tiny knife holstered in a thin case that lays flat under the waistband of her pants. She pulls it out of its case and the blade traces over a faint scar on her stomach. It follows the line of the blade exactly; the wound must have happened when she was sheathing or unsheathing the knife.

She holds it out to Steve, handle first, and Steve accepts it.

“I won it in the marksmanship competition,” she says, taking her time sounding out the longer words.

Steve turns the handle over and reads the worn inscription in the wood. The knife looks to be at least fifty years old.

_Brave in life. Loyal in death. We will rise again._

_In Memory of Captain America_

“They made it before they brought you back. I keep it very sharp,” she looks down as Steve hands her the knife back, “I have to give it back at next year’s competition.”

Steve looks at her downturned face. Her eyelashes are dark and long, her lips pursed in an expression of care. She looks the knife over once, slowly, before sheathing it again. 

Her dark eyes flick up and catch on Steve’s, “How do they fly?” She points to the patch of flattened grass where the helicopters landed.

“They, uh—” Steve looks at the grass and back at her face, “The blades on top—” Steve gestures with one hand and her eyes trace the movement, “They lift it up.” He closes his mouth and swallows, looking back at the matted grass. 

“Captain?”

“Yes,” Steve answers with what’s left of his voice.

“I’ve been sick for a long time,” her eyebrows knit quickly and relax again, “I’m due for my first serum injection next year. If I leave, will I still—” her voice cracks and she starts to cry. She covers her eyes and barely makes a sound.

Steve reaches out and pulls her in. He holds her with one hand on her back and one on her head. She cries into his shoulder and he doesn’t hush her.

“We’ll get you well,” Steve’s voice gives up and his face collapses. Steve’s tears fall on the girl’s shoulder and he repeats, quieter, shakier, “We’ll get you well.”

 

* * *

 

**_Mission Report_ **

_Reporting Agent: Captain Rogers_

 

_Mission objective: Achieved_

_Intel acquired. No team casualties. Liberated children’s prison near Narasampalle. Evacuated prisoners._

 

_Action required (Recommend required assets):_

_Locate and infiltrate spoke locations associated with known hub. Coordinated team regiment required. URGENT. LIVE PRISONERS. CAPTIVE CHILDREN._

 

_Team Status (If compromised, detail condition):_

_Agent Romanov: Operational_

_Agent Wilson: Operational_

_Sergeant Barnes: Operational_

 

* * *

 

Steve sits in a plastic chair at the Hyderabad airport. Natasha is working on getting them the fastest flight out of the country and Steve is staring at the runways. He tracks the taxiing planes with his eyes. Sam to his right, Bucky to his left. He can still feel the girl’s knife at his throat. 

Bucky drapes a jacket over his lap and uses it as cover to pick the box’s lock. He tucks away his knives and sets the box on Steve’s leg. Steve lets it slip off his leg and into his bag. He doesn’t touch it. He doesn’t touch it on the five hour flight to Singapore. Or the five hour flight from Singapore to Taiwan.

Steve doesn’t touch it until they’re sitting in baggage claim in Taipei at two in the morning. He’s so tired his eyes burn when he blinks. His head pounds when he looks down. Steve pulls out the papers. The skin of his fingers feels too thick.

“Why are there always three?” he asks Bucky, who is slouched on the bench next to him.

Bucky shrugs. 

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dear readers. A self-neglect tag has been added (a touch pre-emptive, but better early than late!) Hope you all are enjoying the piece! ^.^

 

* * *

  
 _For the asset, fatigue is weakness and thus, intolerable. He will decide his body’s limits.  
_  

* * *

 

Steve puts the papers back in the box and closes the lid. He rubs the metal seam with his thumb. Steve lets his wrist fall slack and looks up. He stares at the bags crawling along the conveyor belt. The same red bag drifts by twice before Steve opens the box again. He takes out the bottom letter first.  

_April 5th, 1998_

_Dr. Malhotra,_

_Welcome to the Hydra brotherhood._

_In recent years, globalization has broadened our reach immeasurably and the diversification of our leadership only makes us stronger. I look forward to the contributions you will make from the new facilities in India._

_As you know, The Radziewicz Method aspires to shape willing students in the image of Hydra. I want to take this opportunity, not to laud the methodology you have already mastered, but to exhort you not to underestimate the power of people to shape themselves. Put an obstacle in front of a child and he will find his way around it or persist until he has surmounted it. Either way, he will be slow to forget the tools he used to conquer it. Personalize the struggle—give a child an illness to show him he is frail—and he will remake himself to best it. This is how you raise a child in the image of Hydra. He does not see himself beholden to us, but rather imagines that he is scavenging tools from the world around him and, thus, building himself._

_The Radziewicz Method is built on this truth, that loyalty is a stronger bond than obligation. It gives each child the opportunity to grow taller in the eyes of others. It allows him the illusion of choice, even as he serves Hydra’s purpose. Though the children trained in your facility may go on to serve many organizations, it is your mission to insure their ultimate loyalty will always be to Hydra. There is no conflict of interest, of course, because Hydra is apolitical; it is no different than an untrained child’s loyalty to a parent. Be sure they will remember, when they are called to account, who raised them and what they were raised to believe. If you succeed in this, all else will follow._

_I have enclosed some personal artifacts with this letter and would appreciate if you could store them safely for me._

_Wishing you the best of luck,_

_Dr. Bogusław Radziewicz_

Steve sets the letter on Bucky’s leg and picks up the next one.

_May 16th, 1983_

_Dr. Radziewicz,_

_I appreciate your cautious approach but your concerns are unfounded. Hydra outnumbers SHIELD ten to one in man-count alone. Our operations bring in at least a hundred times the revenue as their weak weapons program. They are deeply dependent on us and have no reason to lift up the curtain._

_Furthermore, SHIELD is undergoing a period of great change that will smooth the way for us in the future. Director Carter is set to retire in a few months time, and after the passing of Director Stark, she is the last of the old guard. The new Director is the product of SHIELD’s feeble lineage but a close friend of Alexander Pierce, a rising star within Hydra. I expect that we will not have much trouble with him._

_I have established a trust for each of the primary researchers and asked Mr. Pierce to take over their financial management. Our prosperity has finally granted us financial immortality; the annual payout of our annuity will outpace our needs within a decade. The benefit of this independence is two-fold. The first advantage is that we can restrict the use of our field assets to missions that benefit Hydra directly. The second is that severing our remaining political alliances will greatly reduce our risk of exposure._

_As I now live within the system, I have taken the liberty of removing all traces of my programs from the SHIELD databases and had a few assistants shred what remained on paper. I have also erased the involvement of several colleagues who were recruited to SHIELD around the same time, as they went on to be Hydra contributors. So take comfort in our preparations. Even if Hydra were to be compromised, we would not be exposed._

_Respectfully,_

_Dr. Arnim Zola_

Steve hands Bucky the page without looking at him and unfolds the oldest letter. The paper is thick and well worn. 

_January 21st, 1928_

_Dr. Radziewicz,_

_I trust all is well with you. It has been some time since my last correspondence and I apologize for the lapse. It has been a tumultuous time for all of us. I am writing on behalf of Dr. Zola, seeking advice on the training of a young ward. I understand that you are currently working with our colleagues in Russia to establish a permanent program. I wish you only success. As we are relatively less experienced in the training of children, your guidance would be greatly appreciated._

_As you know, it is easy to motivate a young boy to violence. It is much harder to instill protective instincts at a young age, particularly when the child in question has benefitted little from parental or peer protection. Are there any exercises you’ve used to achieve a similar effect?_

_Secondly, have you had success establishing camaraderie among the children? Unfortunately, it seems children can be quite vicious under stress. A brotherly bond would be greatly preferred to endless competition and infighting. We have not found that loyalty to a higher power tempers their pursuit of individual distinction within the group._

_We have reached something of a stalemate with our conflicting opinions, so your prompt reply would be a great help._

_Sincerely,_

_Dr. Abraham Erskine_

Steve stares at Erskine’s signature for longer than it took him to read the letter. He sets it face down on Bucky’s leg and drops his hands in his lap. 

 

* * *

 

At a hotel in Taipei. So high up Steve can’t hear the city noise through the windows. Kneeling on the bathroom tile and staring at the toilet. Steve can’t sleep and his body is breaking down. He smooths a hand over his hair and stands up. His legs burn from the effort. 

He looks at his face in the mirror. The shadows under his eyes would fade with just two hours rest, but he can’t even close his eyes. He’d already lay in the bed for hours, staring at the hotel ceiling until he couldn’t keep still anymore. 

Steve walks back into the room and over to where Bucky is sleeping on the floor. The light from nearby skyscrapers and the streetlights below hazes in through the window, casting the room in a soft blue. He kneels and Bucky’s eyes open.

“Will you come out with me?”

“Yeah.” Bucky shrugs off his blanket and stands. They tug on their boots and shut the door quietly. Bucky pulls on a jacket in the elevator.

Steve walks without direction, a little too quickly. Bucky keeps up. Steve waits until they’re on a side street, street lights reflecting off the pavement, still wet from an earlier shower.

“The letters are fake,” Steve stops in his tracks as he says it, “I’m not saying you faked them. Or that you know they’re fake. But Erskine would never do that. Do anything to kids.” Steve raises his shoulders and drops them, “He wouldn’t.”

Steve can’t make out Bucky’s shadowed eyes in the dark. Bucky says nothing. 

“I want to get to the bottom of all this,” Steve pushes on, “I’ve been trying to get in touch with Fury but he’s really—”

“What would it take.”

“What?”

“You say you want proof. What would it take.”

“I—” Steve shakes his head, raises his hands, “Nothing. Nothing could convince me. I know the truth. I’m done with Hydra’s shit.”

Bucky stands still. His head is cocked to one side and his hands are in his trouser pockets. He draws a long breath and lets it out.

“I wanted to ask you if you’d be okay. If we just stopped. Stopped looking. Just called it and let SHIELD take over the search.” The humidity settles on Steve’s skin and makes the space between his body and his clothes feel damp.

“Why? You think you’re doing this for me?”

“Stopping?”

“Stopping. Searching. Any of it. It’s not about me. Don’t ask my permission.”

“I’m not asking your permission—”

“Sure sounds like it.”

“Look,” Steve feels frustration thickening behind his breastbone, “You said you’d walk away if I walked away. So let’s walk away. Forget the past and start over. There’s still a lot of good we can—”

“No,” Bucky shakes his head, shifting on his feet impatiently, “You’re on your own. I’m not following you on any more bullshit ‘do good’ missions. If you want to look for proof I’ll watch your back. The truth’s worth knowing, Steve.” Bucky’s eyes glint in the shadows, “But Captain America? I don’t want anything to do with that shield.” Bucky steps closer, “You saw them. Those kids. You saw how they look up to you.”

Steve lets him speak, though his words are sharp. Bucky continues, jabbing a finger at Steve’s chest, “If you’re so stuck on doing good then why can’t you do it without a brand across your chest? You can’t just carry on living in your pretend world where the shield stands for justice and bravery. It doesn’t, Steve. Not to the people who are putting their _lives_ on the _line_ in your footsteps.” Bucky throws his hands up, “You just want to walk away and act like they don’t exist—”

“I didn’t say that. SHIELD is working to take out all the Hydra—”

“And they will _never_ clear them out,” Bucky’s voice is fierce with conviction, “You feed them all that information and what they fuck are they doing with it? Have they cleaned up a single lab? They know it’s hopeless. It runs too deep. And you want to act like Hydra faked all that for you? Who the fuck do you think you are? All the letters. All the fucking—” Bucky waves his hands in an angry circle, “ancient toys in that place—”

Steve leans in, matching his anger, “I didn’t say they don’t hold me up like a symbol. I believe it. That’s what evil looks like, they’ll twist anything they can. But Hydra did not make me. Erskine would never. He would _never_ —”

“Why are you so sure? Too many loose ends for you?” Bucky’s voice is edging up again. He pants around the words like he can’t catch his breath, “I can tie them up.” He nods at Steve, “They couldn’t fix the infighting. You weren’t the only subject and I wasn’t the only protector. I knew the others. They were animals, Steve,” his teeth flash briefly in the dim light, “Not children at all. Every one of them died. Zola said they ‘failed’ when he showed me their mangled bodies. They let their subject die and paid the price,” Bucky’s face draws into a snarl, “Broken bones, missing teeth, blood everywhere. They couldn’t fix the fighting so they tried to scare us straight.” 

“ _Stop_ ,” Steve hisses through his teeth. He takes a threatening step toward Bucky, “Those children are living through a real hell. Stop telling these sick stories—”

“Isn’t it sick? All the money in the world and they discover that bedtime stories are stronger than serums. That’s hell on earth, that’s hell—”

Steve grabs Bucky’s collar and slams him backward into the wall.

Bucky’s head hits the brick and he winces, but doesn’t stop talking, “Because giving you a pretty normal life was a pain in the ass. Easier to just raise soldiers. That’s what they figured out. Hasn’t made another Captain America but it was good enough to make his right-hand woman.”

Steve holds him fast to the brick. Adrenaline flooding him and tightening his fists. Steve wants to hit him. The urge pushes its way out his throat in a growl. He’s breathing hard, staring Bucky down.

“You seem like you’re in the mood to talk,” Bucky’s head tips back and the stark streetlights glare down on his face, “So let’s talk. Let’s start with why they picked me. You still don’t have an answer for me and you don’t like my answer. So let’s talk about who you think I am.” Bucky’s hands are at his sides. He’s not even trying to pull Steve’s grip loose. “They could have anyone. They could pick any broken soldier and make him a machine. And they picked a scared kid from Brooklyn with a brave face and half an arm. Tell me Steve,” Suddenly Bucky shoves off the wall, forcing Steve back, “You give me one good reason why the world revolves around us.”

Steve hits him. His head is too clouded to decide if he wants to hit him hard or soften the blow. His arm moves on its own accord and his fist cracks against Bucky’s jaw. His head snaps back. Bucky reels, his hands come up reflexively and he shakes his head. His eyes open and he laughs. Split lip, bloody teeth. He looks back at Steve with cold black eyes and laughs.

“I’ll tell you why. Let me try again,” the blood drips down his chin and Bucky doesn’t wipe it away, “Because we’re just chess pieces.” Bucky sweeps his arm to the side, “You see all these pawns dying and you think they do it for you. They’re not following you, Steve. They die because the hand in control,” Bucky points to the sky, “sends them to die. And you think you’re their leader but you’re just the white king. The same hand controls you.”

Steve spits, voice mean, “And you’re the black king?”

“They let me think so. Acting like they needed me. But no. That’s you too. That’s the beauty of the game. You think it’s me and I know it’s you. Think about it,” Bucky’s face is calm, “If you think I’m working for Hydra, knowingly or not, then you think all of this is for you. That it’s just one long elaborate set-up to sell you a crazy story. You think I was frozen because they knew they’d need a secret weapon against you. You think they fucked with my mind just for you. Just to convince you,” Bucky’s chin is streaked dark red. The blood glints when he tilts his head, “Right?”

Bucky spits red near his boots, “But I can see it. I’ve been watching them for a lot longer than you have. They don’t have to fake _anything_. They need you to win the game and you’ll do it for them.”

“That’s what Hydra does.” Another trickle of blood branches out from Bucky’s lip, reaching toward his jaw. He lets it bleed, “You just can’t see it because they’re too damn good at it. In the letter Radziewicz said to make sure the kids were loyal to Hydra, no matter who they worked for. You know how they do that? They make themselves invisible. There were no Hydra insignias in that school. The children don’t know the salute. Loyalty to Hydra means not knowing its name. Because Hydra is bred so deep in their bones that when the time comes and some one calls on them to _do the right thing,_ they know exactly what to do.”

Steve backs up and Bucky stays where he is.

Bucky sounds exhausted, “The only thing you know for sure is what you believe in. And you believe in what they told you to believe. You do what’s right. And what’s right? They get to decide. They’ve got strings in you so deep you think they’re your tendons. And when they pull them taught you think you’re moving yourself.”

“So why did you pull me out of the river,” the words fall from Steve’s lips. “You could have done the world a favor.” His voice is dead.

Bucky watches him from across the alley. He finally drags the back of his shirt sleeve over his chin, smearing red to gory brown. “Because you’re good. They made you but that’s not a death sentence. You’re still good inside. You’ve been blind and you deserve a chance to start over.”

Bucky pulls his split lip into his mouth to clean the wound. The sound of cars rolling over wet pavement echoes between the buildings, “You know I think I might have ended up this way anyway. Even if they hadn’t—” Bucky shrugs with one elbow, “And I think maybe you would’ve been pretty much the same person too.” Bucky pushes his hands into his pockets. “I take things a day at a time.” The blood has soaked into his jacket sleeve, “And today you’re worth killing for.”

Steve turns and walks to the end of the alley. Bucky follows a couple of steps behind. 

 

* * *

 

“What’s the status of the intel gathered in these labs?”

“What do you mean?” Steve’s voice is stiff and it forces his lips into a thin line. Taking a call in the hotel stairway with bare feet. His knuckles are still sore from the punch. They itch as they heal and the sensation makes Steve want to punch the cinderblock wall just to make it stop.

“The reports say you’re picking up letters. Where are the letters.” Maria’s voice is crisp.

“I have them.”

“Why haven’t you sent in scans?”

Steve pauses. He looks down at his knees. “Have you cleaned up Oymyakon?”

“We are not going to negotiate. If you want SHIELD protection then you follow mission protocol." 

“Why do I owe you anything for requesting transport for a hundred captive children.” Steve’s voice flattens. It’s not a question. He grips the handrail winding around the staircase with his injured hand. 

“Because I risk my pilots’ lives sending them in there. We have protocol for a reason.”

“What about the children’s lives.”

“What about the lives of thousands of dead civilians we could have saved if we had had more information about Hydra’s operations?”

“Oh so you’d have a team together to take care of that? You have at least two dozen locations with live prisoners to clean out. Call me back when you’re—” Maria ends the call and Steve doesn’t bother finishing his sentence.

 


	18. Chapter 18

* * *

  
_The asset must be most comfortable leading. It is not beneficial for him to routinely depend on another for guidance or reassurance. Ideally, the asset will select a superior who is easily manipulated or manipulative; perceived equals will threaten the asset’s sense of independence.  
  
_

* * *

 

Sunlight through the windows but it doesn’t warm the room. Steve is sitting in an armchair in the corner when the others wake up. Natasha leads them to a cafe full of expats.

“Eat up. We’ve got three flights today,” she says over the table.

“Why didn’t we just sleep at the airport?” Sam asks his menu.

“Yeah, two of us with a bench each and two watching the halls with their hands on their guns?” Natasha’s tone is casual, “You have to rest when you can.”

“Where are we going?” Steve hasn’t picked up his menu. He meets Natasha’s eyes when she looks up.

“South Africa,” her voice has changed.

“Again?” Sam looks between Steve and Natasha.

“We’ve got a friend to see.”

Steve has scrambled eggs and eggs on toast and eggs over easy. He eats a pile of shaved ham and a bowl of granola. When he’s full he waits a few minutes, watching Natasha cut pineapple with the side of her fork, and eats two plate-sized waffles with butter and syrup. Steve wraps up a biscuit in a napkin and stuffs it in his pocket.

 

* * *

 

Steve spends the day sitting in plane seats, walking into airports, sitting in airport seats, walking back onto planes, and settling into a new plane seat. He takes the window spot, stares out at the clouds, and doesn’t sleep. 

The sun sets on the second flight and the cabin lights come up. Steve isn’t keeping track of where they are or where they’re going. He knows the plane is pointed west but there’s land under his window and he doesn’t know its name.

In the last leg, Steve closes his eyes for a few minutes at a time. He listens to the quiet rustle of people around him. Bucky sat next to him for the first flight, Natasha for the second, and Sam for the third. Sam seems to sleep at every opportunity and Steve tries not to wake him.

They walk back through the Johannesburg airport and take another cab to a hotel in a new part of town. When they’re standing under the hotel’s porte-cochère Steve lifts his hands over his head and tries to stretch his spine. He tips forward, letting the weight of his arms pull them toward the ground and lets his head tilt loose on his neck. His head goes light for a second when he rights himself. Bucky drags the bags out of the back of the cab and Natasha approaches Steve.

“He’s there now.”

“Where?”

Natasha hands Steve a slip of paper with an address written in blue ink.

“What’s he just— waiting around?” Steve shoves the paper in his pocket.

“He wants to talk to you.”

“How convenient.”

Steve gets back in the cab and shows the driver the address. The ride is short. Steve watches the street signs as they pass. He gets out a block away and walks toward the dingy coffeeshop bearing the address on the paper. He can see Fury through the plate glass windows in the front. Wearing all black and dark sunglasses.

Steve’s heart picks up its pace. He pushes through the front door and nods in response to the greeting from the woman behind the counter.

Steve sits in the chair across from Fury. The faint clink of dishes in a sink drifts by.

“Hi Nick.”

“Captain,” Fury nods, “Heard you’ve been looking for me.”

“Heard you wanted to talk to me.”

“I wanted you to hurry up. I can't be out in the sun for long.”

“So what do you know?”

“About what?”

“This network of Hydra labs.”

“That’s not what you want to talk to me about.”

Steve stills. He sits back in his chair. His body drains and floods. Emotion pulses where blood used to rush.

“You want to know if it’s true,” Nick’s head tilts and Steve knows exactly what his eye would look like if he could see it. Piercing and steady.

“Tell me what you know about the network of labs,” Steve drops his voice and lowers his chin.

“Fine,” Fury leans back in his chair, “I know nothing.”

“You knew Hydra was behind Ivan Vanko.”

“I knew someone was. We all thought Hydra was long gone.”

“Does Stark know?”

“I don’t know what he knows,” Fury cocks his head, exasperated.

“Was Hydra funding SHIELD?”

“Looks like it,” Fury deadpans.

“Come on Nick,” Steve jerks his head to the side, anger pulling up the corner of his lip, “I need answers here.”

“I wish I had them for you Cap.”

“Who was Erskine’s charge?”

“Charge?”

“His ward. A child.”

“No idea.”

“What was Hydra’s greatest psychological success?”

Fury throws his hands up, “What is this, trivia hour? I have no idea.”

“The only reason we’re sitting here right now is because I didn’t send Maria the letters.” Steve’s tone is icy, “So stop wasting my time and yours,” Steve leans forward, face hardening, “and tell me what you know.”

Fury stares back at him, unperturbed.

Steve shakes his head. The motion makes his vision blur for a fleeting second, “I don’t appreciate it, Nick. I thought things would be different after D.C.”

Fury takes a sip of his coffee and Steve breathes in, lungs feeling weightless and staticky. “Don’t bullshit me Cap. This isn’t a SHIELD mission.”

“That’s funny because I remember being dropped off in the Swiss Alps by a SHIELD helicopter with a SHIELD mission brief.”

“And then what? You stormed off to Russia to stage an arms deal gone wrong? Left a man lying dead in his home with his gold-capped teeth missing? Gifted me—” Fury lifts his hands onto the table like he’s laying out something precious, “a path of bodies to Brazil and back and shit ton of urgent clean up jobs?”

Steve holds his eyes. The words roll right off his skin. 

“Don’t fuck with me.” Fury rests both arms on the table, loose hands, “You want to know if Erskine betrayed you. If it’s true, then you think your life is lie. If it’s not, you think your best friend, the one you’d do anything for, is truly gone. Lost his mind to Hydra’s lies.”

Fury sits still and Steve stares at his sunglasses lenses.

“Even if I had the answer to that question, I don’t think you’d wanna hear it.”

“Did you know about the kids,” Steve’s voice is stripped down to just sounds.

Fury sighs, interlacing his fingers. “The US had a training program for a while. It wasn’t under SHIELD but I knew of it.” Fury’s chin dips, “We hired some agents from them. Some of my best agents. I didn’t know how intense the training was. And I had no idea they started them so young. I thought they brought them in at 15.” Fury looks out the window and Steve catches a glimpse of his eye through the side of his glasses. "They were a lot younger than that.”

“You knew Natasha was raised that way.”

Fury nods without moving his eyes from the window.

The coffee cup in front of Fury is sending up thin threads of steam.

“Cap, it’s not often that I apologize for doing my job, so listen up. I let you down. I’m sorry for that. I’m doing everything I can to fix what’s gone wrong.”

“SHIELD’s not.”

“They are,” Fury’s voice hardens and he looks at Steve again. “They are doing the best they can. There’s a crew in Oymyakon right now but Maria can’t tell you shit over the phone."

Steve is so still in his chair that he can feel his pulse in the back of his legs.

“SHIELD needs to start over. We’re going to fold the government agency and rethink the structure. We need to stay apolitical.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

Fury draws and breath and lets it out.

“I need to know Nick. Tell me what you know about Erskine.”

“Truthfully?” Fury raises his eyebrows and Steve nods. “I know nothing.”

“Who would know.”

“No one,” Fury shrugs, “At this point. It’s been over eighty years. You’d know best Cap.” 

“That’s not good enough.”

“It’s the best you’ve got,” He takes a sip of his coffee, “I know what it feels like to be betrayed by a friend. Now you’ve got one friend who’s dead and one who’s alive. So choose wisely which one you decide to defend.”

Steve stands abruptly, shoving his chair back with his knees. “Thanks for the advice,” he mutters as he heads for the door. 

“Cap,” Fury holds him in place with his voice, “I’ll make some calls, okay? Meet me back here, same time tomorrow.”

Steve nods and pushes out the door.

 

* * *

 

Bucky is waiting at the end of the block in a beat up white sedan. He rolls down the window, “Want a ride?” 

“I could have called a cab.”

“Yeah. But I had this car and nothing better to do,” Bucky sounds a little nervous to Steve’s ears. He opens the passenger side door and slides into the seat. 

Bucky starts the engine.

“Steve, I need to tell you something.”

“Okay,” Steve’s frustration fades into the background. He turns to look at Bucky’s profile. 

“I know you think that Hydra’s been jerking me around. And I’d be lying if I said they didn’t mess me up pretty bad.” He takes a deep breath, Steve suddenly feels like they’re back in Brooklyn, negotiating something that could hurt someone’s pride. “But I want to be honest with you. For my sake more than yours. I haven’t had a lot of chances to tell the truth, so hear me out.”

Steve is trying to read Bucky’s expression. He nods even though Bucky can’t see it.

“When I came back to New York with my orders, I had asked for that. They let me come back for a couple of days to say goodbye. I knew they were going to take you soon, but I didn’t know—” Bucky’s voice stops on a shaky sound. He drives silently for a minute before continuing, “I saw Erskine. I saw him right behind you at the fair. I saw him and I knew he was going to take you right then. That night.” Bucky’s voice is getting faster, more insistent, “I knew you were going to get the serum but I just— I saw him and I— I was fucking— terrified. I’ve never been that scared. I just knew— that was the end. And I could see it then, all the sudden. We should have run when we had the chance. And now Erskine was right fucking behind you and it was over. I just had to say goodbye and turn around and let you live out the rest of your life as a Hydra pawn.”

Tire hum on the rough roads. The seat lurches when the front tire dips into a pothole and Steve lets it tip his body forward. For a blurry second his body thinks its back on a plane.

“I was just standing there staring at you.” Bucky’s voice cracks, “I was a shitty friend to you and you were a better friend than I deserved. I should have killed him. I could have ended it.”

“Bucky,” Steve interrupts. He closes his eyes and presses three fingertips to his eyelids. “You wouldn’t have killed a man in the middle of a fair. You wouldn’t have killed a man at all—”

“You say that because you don’t understand. How easy it was,” Bucky gestures at himself, “I tracked down the guy who had you in the alley behind the movie theatre and slit his throat later that night. It would have been nothing for me.”

Steve rests his head back against the seat rest. He presses into his eyelids until colors crackle across the black of his vision.

“He was so fucking proud. Listening to you,” Bucky’s voice is dripping with disgust, “This sick smile on his face when you were talking about going to war and I just wanted to grab you and shake you until you shut up. Because he was fucking right.” Bucky slams an open palm against the steering wheel, “You _can_ make a hero. It is a fucking formula. I should have pulled his teeth out and made him choke on them,” Bucky’s voice pitches low into a growl, “But I didn’t. You know why? I didn’t want you to see me like that. I was so careful to pull my punches in front of you, not hurt anyone too bad.” 

Bucky pauses and the silence rings. His voice is calmer when he speaks again, “I would’verather been the dead friend than the living nightmare.” Bucky huffs a laugh, “Funny right?”

“Bucky.” Steve speaks without opening his eyes, “You didn’t know me on the bridge. How do you explain that? You did not know me.”

“Spend enough time in hell and you’d forget your own mother’s face.”

“That’s bullshit,” Steve opens his eyes and looks over at him, “And you know it. They gave you your memory back. They had a reason.”

Bucky laughs. The corners of his eyes don’t crinkle. “Yeah I bet they did. Just like when they picked some skinny kid off the street and gave him the most powerful body in the world.”

“That was Erskine. Not Hydra.” The words come out jerkily.

“I forget that you think they’re not connected.”

“Bucky, just— Listen. Think about it for a second,” Steve’s voice has risen to a shout, “Why would they give you your memories back?”

“ _I never lost them_ ,” Bucky shouts back. “Why don’t you do the thinking? Maybe it was me. Maybe it was me without you for once. And maybe I actually was strong enough to break away.” Bucky cuts through the air with a sharp hand, “You single-handedly stormed a Hydra base with no military training. Why is to so hard for you to believe that I made it out on my own?”

“It’s not about you Buck,” Steve shakes his head, looking back out the windshield, “It’s about Hydra. I’m not talking about you here—”

“Hold on. If I’m working for Hydra, trying to get to you, why would they have me lead you to their biggest labs?”

“We don’t know they’re Hydra labs. It could all be a set up.”

Bucky shakes his head, exhaling hard. His grip is tight on the steering wheel.

“They’d want me to believe you. They’d have you do everything I’d last expect.”

Bucky looks him right in the eye, challenging and cold, “Yeah? What are you expecting right now.”

Steve holds his eyes. In his peripheral vision he notes the cars ahead of them and behind them. He sees a highway overpass coming in a little over a block. He sees the truck carrying cans of propane coming the other way. He says nothing.

Bucky doesn’t look back at the road. Tension snaps and yawns wide. Steve is about to rip the steering wheel away from him when Bucky sighs and looks straight ahead.

Road noise reverberates through the car’s panels, the uneven texture of asphalt gently shakes its frame.

Bucky says, “Steve,” the name sounds natural in his voice but the tone is alien, “If you didn’t want to hear the truth you should have stayed dead.”   
  


* * *

 

Steve takes a cab back to the coffee shop in the morning. He gets out a block away and starts up the sidewalk. He can see Fury sitting at the same table. There’s a mug of coffee on the table but Steve can’t see the steam from here. He drops his head, watching his shoes pass in and out of view.

He sees the flash a half second before the shockwave reaches him. Steve falls instinctively, skinning his chin on the concrete. The heat wave roars over him and the deafening sound holds him down.

Steve looks up, mind narrowing from white noise to mission-sharp. The street is a haze of smoke and dirt. He has his phone out before he’s found his footing.

Natasha answers in the middle of the first ring.

“Bomb detonated. Need you here now,” Steve coughs.

Natasha hangs up without a word.

The smoke is so think that Steve can only see the suggestion of buildings and cars around him. He runs in the street until he sees the curb of the sidewalk in front of the cafe. He runs straight forward, aiming for where Fury was sitting. The bushes in front of the shop are on fire so Steve picks his way around. He hurls rubble to the side, digging past what used to be the roof.

“NICK,” Steve yells as loud as he can, “NICK MAKE SOME NOISE.”

Steve pauses to listen but he only hears muffled commotion from the street and the crackle of nearby fires. Steve still can’t see more than a couple of feet in front of him and he’s breathing in air thick with dust. He keeps digging, bloodying his bare hands on rebar and broken glass.

Natasha, Sam, and Bucky arrive so fast they must have flown. They split the cafe into quadrants and continue the search. Bucky takes the quadrant farthest from Fury’s table.

The police, the fire department, and two ambulances respond. Natasha flashes a badge and they leave the group of four in peace.

“You saw him?” Sam calls out.

“Yeah, sitting right here,” Steve points to the wreck at his feet. He coughs once and wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. His skin itches everywhere. His knees scratch the inside of his filthy pants when he bends his legs.

They search for two hours before Natasha calls it. Not only did they not find Fury, they found no one. No bodies. No casualties. Natasha leads them out of the rubble and onto a back street. She walks for a block until the air starts to clear. They’re covered in dust and ash. Everyone has at least one hand with a makeshift bandage. 

Natasha stops and waits for the group to gather.

“He’s not dead,” she says, “I’m not falling for that again.”

“Why the theatrics, though? If he had to leave—” Steve shrugs and dust billows off his arms. “Does he think we’re going to believe that?”

“Maybe it wasn’t for you,” Bucky says. Steve tenses immediately at his cold tone. “Maybe he doesn’t give a shit about you.”

“Stop,” Natasha’s voice cuts. She gives Bucky a black look.

“Come on,” Bucky steps closer. His shoulders are tight and threatening. His voice is bitter, “You’re not naive enough to trust him again.”

“Fuck off. You don’t know him. You don’t know me.” Natasha’s face contorts with a brighter anger than she’s ever let Steve see.

“He uses you. All of you.” Bucky steps closer. He’s close enough to lean down into Natasha’s face, “Surprise, surprise. Here’s not here when you need him.”

“Back the fuck up,” Natasha grits out. Her hands fall to her sides. She stands her ground.

Bucky shoves her shoulder, “You’re serious?” He’s spitting, mocking her, “You’re really going to toe the company line? Now?”

“This is your last warning.” Natasha’s voice is low. Steve doesn’t move to intervene. 

“You go looking for him and get gassed. Does he give a shit? No. He does not. Look at yourself. Is this what you wanted? Serving another master that can abuse you and you don’t—” Natasha draws a gun from her hip and cocks it. Bucky laughs meanly in her face, “I guess I get another warning, huh?”

Natasha steps back and levels the gun at Bucky’s head.

Bucky barks a horrible sound, “That’s right, good idea.” He swoops forward, pressing his forehead to the gun so hard Natasha has to lock her elbow, “Go ahead. _Go ahead_.” He shoves her back with his head against the gun. “Let’s do it right now. Right in front of him.” He grabs the muzzle of the gun and holds it still in the center of his forehead, wild eyes and a sick smile, “You know what it would do to him. To lose me again. Why don’t you watch his eyes when you pull the trigger,” Bucky stabs a finger at Steve. “Or better yet, I’ll pull the trigger _so you don’t have to._ ”

Natasha jerks back her gun. She holsters it in one smooth, furious motion, breathing hard. She looks at Bucky like she’s going to spit in his face, then turns and walks away.

Bucky watches her go. He pivots on his heel and walks back into the rubble without a word.

Steve and Sam stand in the road. The crunch of gravel fades quickly and when they are the only people in sight, Sam walks slowly to the curb and sits down. Steve watches his knees bend before he stretches his legs straight out ahead of him. He walks over and sits next to Sam.

In the haze of dust from the explosion, Steve can’t see any farther than the end of the block. The illusion makes it seem like their tiny world ends in an ever-thickening dirty gauze wrap.

Steve rests his boots flat on the asphalt and wraps his arms around his knees. Steve holds his right wrist in his left hand. A cut in his right hand has soaked through the cloth he wrapped around it. He can tell there’s dirt in the wound from the way it sparks with pain when he flexes his fingers.

Steve looks at his knees and his vision can’t place them in space. His eyes feel unfocused as the texture of the denim looks alternately close and far away. Steve blinks.

“Did you know that South Africa is the world’s largest producer of macadamia nuts?”

“I did not,” Steve says to his boots. 

“I read that in a magazine on the plane.”

Steve says nothing. Then, “He’s so angry.”

“He’s got a lot to be angry about.”

They sit in silence a while longer. Until Steve’s stomach starts to churn.

“I don’t know how to fix this.” He looks over at Sam.

Sam looks back at him. Steve’s stomach heaves with guilt and settles to disgusted resignation. He waits for Sam to speak but no words come. Steve’s insides pull in on themselves and he sits until his worry becomes an emotionless truth. His body feels so heavy he’s not sure he can stand.

“Have you ever had macadamia nuts?” Sam asks. 

Steve shakes his head.

“Let’s go get some then.”

 

 


	19. Chapter 19

* * *

  
_The asset understands the difference between a mistake and a tactical shift. Mistakes cannot be corrected._   


* * *

 

“In here,” Sam points at a corner store. Steve follows him in and they buy a bag of salted macadamias. The bag says they were grown in Hawaii.

Sam rips it open and pours the nuts out into his palm. The man behind the counter is eyeing the wing pack on Sam’s back. He nudges the pile in two with his pointer finger and holds out half for Steve.

Steve pops the first nut in his mouth. He bites down and his back teeth slip, skimming the side of it. Steve tries again, biting it in half. He chews and gives Sam a nod.

The walk back to the hotel is longer than Steve expected. His right boot rubs a blister into his heel. It burns with every step.

The hotel emerges in the distance. Steve keeps his eyes on its awning, watching it get closer and closer. His feet carry him through the lobby. Much of the dust in his clothes has shaken itself loose on the walk over.

They stand silent in the elevator and Sam unlocks their hotel door without a word.

“Is it okay if I shower first?” Steve grabs a fresh shirt and a less filthy pair of pants.

“Go for it.” Sam goes for the bed and hesitates. He stands next to it, looking down. Then looks down at his filthy clothes.

“Go for it,” Steve parrots. He hears Sam flop down on the bed as he retreats to the bathroom. 

Hot water. Hotel soap. A grey film on the tub floor.

After showering and dressing, Steve pokes his head out the bathroom door, “You know I think showers are so much more satisfying when you have a lot to wash off.”

Sam hums from the bed. He takes Steve’s place in the bathroom and Steve rolls up the dusty bedcovers and shoves them in the corner of the room.

He’s not surprised to see Natasha’s bag gone. Bucky’s things are still there, though, and he’s clearly been back to the room before Sam and Steve. Steve looks over his combat gear, spread over the bed. It’s rumpled and Bucky usually leaves his things folded and stacked. Steve picks his jacket up by the collar and uncovers a handgun and two small grenades on the bed spread. He picks up the gun. The safety is on.

Steve drops it and strides to the bathroom door. He beats three times with his fist, “Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“We’ve got a problem.”

The water shuts off and Sam flings open the door a second later. He’s buttoning his pants over wet skin, “What’s going on?”

“Bucky’s gear is thrown on the bed. All his knives are still in their holsters. And the safety is on on his gun. He never turns on the safety. ”

Steve walks quickly back the bed and Sam follows.

“I think he’s been taken.”

Sam nods, looking down at the bed, “Too many clues.”

Steve runs to his bag and dumps it on the stripped bed, “One of my shirts is gone. And a pair of my pants.” Steve rubs a hand over his mouth, pulse flying, “Shit.”

Sam is already strapping his wing pack into place, “What’s the call, Cap?”

“I— shit,” Steve spins, looking through the mess of weapons, clothes, and dried food on the bed, “We have no idea where they would take him.”

“Call Nat?”

“How?” Steve pulls out his phone and flicks through the recent call list. Natasha’s been through sixteen different burners in the last week. He tries the number he called just a few hours ago when the coffee shop blew up. It rings once, plays an error tone and begins, “We’re sorry, this number is no longer listed in our directory—”

Steve hangs up, “We shouldn’t have let him leave on his own.” Steve tries to drop his phone and ends up throwing it. He draws a fast, furious breath, “Sam, what the fuck are we going to—”

The hotel door slams open. Both men spin to see Natasha come running into the room. In the half-second before she speaks, Steve realizes that he hasn’t seen her carry her own bag in weeks. Bucky always has his bag over one shoulder and Natasha’s over the other.

“One of my trackers is gone,” she throws her bag to the floor and starts to dig through it. “It’s specifically for abductions. Looks like a prescription bottle full of pills.” She pulls out a thin, durable looking laptop and opens it on the bed. “Because if you’re being abducted they want you alive. And if they want you alive ‘let me just grab my meds’ doesn’t seem unreasonable.” Natasha starts typing furiously on the tiny keyboard. “The tracker is cooked into one of the pills so you can swallow it if things go to hell.”

“So Hydra has him,” Steve kneels next to her on the floor, brows furrowing at the computer screen.

“Someone has him,” Natasha’s voice is crisp. Steve keeps his eyes on the screen as she decrypts the signal, “They’re still in the city.” Natasha opens a new program that plots its current location on a map, “Headed for the airport.” She slams the computer closed.

Steve grabs Bucky’s gun and shoves it in the waistband of his jeans. He pulls his shield from where it’s stashed under the bed and runs for the door. Three sets of heavy footsteps racing down the hallway. They take the stairs. The shuffle and thud of their boots on the concrete steps echoes loud in the enclosed space. The sounds overlap as they descend, deteriorating to a  scraped up echo by the time Steve punches out the emergency exit to the parking lot. 

He jacks a car in under ten seconds and they squeal out of the lot. Natasha pulls up the tracker’s feed on a small device clipped to her belt. “Left here,” she says.

Steve slams the steering wheel to the left and the car’s front wheels lock, rear wheels drift into the corner. He floors the gas when they’re parallel to the street and the car lurches as it fights for traction. Natasha takes them the wrong way down two one way streets and up an emergency access lane to get to the highway.

Steve keeps the gas pedal on the floor and the wheel straight. He braces against the jerk of the overworked gearbox as they accelerate, pushing 80 MPH by the time they merge onto the expressway. Steve punches the horn and holds it down. They race through traffic. Steve keeps his movements precise. He uses both roadside shoulders to pass cars. “How far,” he grits out.

“Two miles and closing,” Natasha replies, “What’s the plan, Cap?”

“Take the wheel as soon as we have eyes on target.”

Natasha nods, “One mile and closing.” Steve dodges a line of cars driving too close together and pulls into the far left lane. “Black van at your one o’ clock.”

Steve lets go of the wheel and Natasha takes it. He rolls down the driver side window and heaves himself halfway out of it. Steve sits on the door and reaches his open hand blindly inside the car toward the back seat. Sam hands him his shield.

Steve climbs onto the car roof, squinting his eyes against the wind. He keeps a tight hold on the door frame. There’s a jerk when Natasha takes the driver’s seat and presses the gas pedal to the floor again. Natasha pulls up next to the van and slightly behind. The van starts to accelerate and she matches its pace.

Steve takes two running steps and jumps. He hangs in the air, his body already bracing for the impact, his free hand reaching for the antenna jutting up from the roof. Steve lands, two feet planting on the smooth medal. He grabs the antenna to steady himself and lunges forward. Steve slams his shield straight down through the windshield and comes crashing in after it. The driver pulls a gun and fires. Steve deflects the shot and jerks the emergency brake back. The van skids and its nose dips dangerously. Steve hits the driver’s helmeted head hard with his shield and the driver twists the wheel. The van takes a hard turn, lifting up on two wheels. Steve hears another body land on the roof and the force of impact pulls the van back from the precipice of flipping. 

Steve’s head hits the window as the van knocks back onto four wheels. He lashes out again with his shield but it’s difficult to maneuver in the van’s cabin. Steve pulls his arm free of the shield’s straps and draws the gun tucked into his pants. He levels it at the driver’s head, “Get out of the car.”

The driver ignores him, punching a red button on the dashboard and slamming on the gas. It must override the emergency brake because the van starts tearing along the highway again. Steve fires a warning shot past the driver and out the driver side window, “PULL OVER NOW.” He yells, voice harsh and threatening.

The driver doesn’t react. Steve takes a shot at the helmet. The driver’s head whips to the side, cracking into the shattered window. Steve jumps to take control of the wheel and finds a gun under his jaw. The driver is alive, steering with one hand and aiming a kill shot at Steve with the other. Steve can see the flattened bullet embedded in the side of his helmet. Having lost his advantage, he moves immediately, before the driver can anticipate his actions. Steve drops his hand from the wheel to the driver’s combat jacket. He draws a knife and slices it across the driver’s throat in a single motion. 

Blood spurts warm on Steve’s hand. He drops the knife and takes the wheel. The wound isn’t deep enough to kill but Steve can still hear the sickening suck of breath being drawn through the gash. Steve shoves his leg into the driver’s footwell and slams on the brakes. He brings the van to a stop and pulls out the keys. He reaches across the seat to open the door and drags the driver to the asphalt. 

Steve grabs his shield and races around to the back of the van. Traffic is whipping by, undisturbed. The car they stole from the hotel parking lot is nowhere in sight. Steve hits the armored doors three times with his shield before they give. He rips one door off its hinges to see a tangle of black. There’s a freshly cut hole in the roof and Natasha is struggling with three agents at once. Steve drags the first off and catches them in a strangle hold. He holds tight until the body goes limp and drops it on the roadway. 

When Steve looks back inside the van Natasha has killed one agent and subdued the other. Only then does Steve see Bucky. He’s cuffed to a heavily fortified metal chair and bleeding.

Natasha starts cutting through the cuffs with a laser, head tucked so her hair obscures her face. Steve jumps into the van and tries to pry off the cuffs with his bare hands. He takes a swing at the hinge with his shield right when the van lurches into motion. Steve and Natasha both fall to the van floor, scrambling for hand holds as the back of the truck dips with the acceleration. 

Steve stops his backward slide with a boot against the door frame. They fly back onto the highway, engine revving dangerously, and Steve sees, through the blur of motion and urgency, that the driver is no longer on the asphalt behind them. Steve jumps to his feet and smashes the last cuff around Bucky’s right wrist with his shield. The hinge breaks and the metal shears to one side. 

Steve grabs Bucky around the waist and tries to pull him free but his wrist catches on the broken hinge. Natasha grabs Steve’s hand and forces his fingers roughly through her belt. “HOLD ON,” she screams. 

Natasha jumps the exact moment the van crashes off the side of the overpass. She’s reaching up, fingers spread. Steve sees her outstretched arms silhouetted against the bright sky. Steve’s body lifts up off the van floor as he falls and for a fleeting second, he is weightless. He’s looking down at Bucky when they’re suddenly jerked upward. Steve sees the van fall past them and Bucky’s wrist snap on the broken hinge. It shears off a wide strip of his skin as his hand pulls free. Steve’s eyes fly up to see Sam above them, wings spread, eyes ahead, holding Natasha’s arms.

 


	20. Chapter 20

* * *

  
_The asset is loyal to the mission first, and as he exists as an extension of the mission, he is loyal only to his own conscience. Thus, training is critical; there is no way to unmake a made man._   


* * *

 

“Take me down,” Bucky yells up at Sam, “NOW.”

Sam dips, heading for the roadway underneath the overpass. He sets the group down slowly, with Bucky’s boots hitting the ground first, then Steve’s, then Natasha’s. Steve tugs his fingers out from under Natasha’s belt and nods at her. She nods back.

Bucky starts walking back toward the wreck of twisted metal that used to be the van. The group watches Bucky’s back. He’s limping slightly, favoring his left leg. His right arm is pulled into his chest and his left hangs at his side. At this distance, Steve takes in the state of his clothes, the gashes through his shirt and pants, the dried blood on the back of his leg and the fresh stain blooming by his collar. 

He walks with his head down, hair hanging loose. Steve can see him clearly when he inhales but his eyes blur slightly with each exhale. Steve stands with his feet planted, swaying slightly. His heart is hammering in his chest from the adrenaline. His head reminds him he hasn’t slept in so long that his body has given up on soreness and saved all its energy for crippling fatigue. 

Bucky reaches the wreck. He rips the driver’s side door off with his metal hand. It goes flying in an arc over the back of the van. Bucky reaches inside, bending both knees for leverage, and drags the driver’s deadweight from the tangle. He reaches around to the agent’s underarm holster and draws his pistol. Bucky stands and fires two shots into the driver’s head. He drops the pistol and turns back.

Bucky looks like a mirage. Steve can’t tell if it’s his eyes or the heat waves off the pavement. His feet barely seem to touch the ground. When Bucky is twenty feet away, he lifts his chin. Steve sees his own exhaustion reflected back at him. He holds Bucky’s shadowed eyes as he limps closer.

Bucky stops when he’s practically toe to toe with Steve’s boots. His breathing is labored and he pauses for a second before speaking. “Stop leaving them alive.”

Steve blinks and in the fleeting blackness behind his eyelids his body loses its sense of equilibrium. Dizziness spins into place behind Steve’s eyes. He says nothing.

Bucky steps back and turns to Natasha. He pulls a small yellow-orange bottle of pills from his right pocket with his left hand and gives it to her. He nods and she nods back.

“Do you want me to set it?” she asks, voice low.

Bucky nods again.

Natasha starts walking without a backward look. The three men follow her to a corner store on the other side of the overpass. She holds up a flat hand to stop them on the sidewalk and goes inside alone. Bucky wanders back toward the overpass. There’s a small parking lot under the looming structure. He takes a seat on the asphalt between two parked cars. Steve sits across from him and Sam joins them, knees cracking quietly as he crouches.

“How are you feeling?” Steve watches Bucky’s shadowed face.

“Fine,” his voice is stiff. He holds his bleeding, crooked wrist out in front of him, “Wrist hurts.”

Steve nods and clears his throat, “But you don’t think— they didn’t give you the drugs again?”

Bucky meets his eyes, “No.”

Steve feels his stomach clench and sink. He lets the words sit on his tongue for a few seconds. He wills them back down his throat but doesn’t have the energy to keep them there. He opens his mouth and lets the sounds pour out, “Why do you think they didn’t?”

Bucky’s face is unchanged. Steve braces himself for the backlash. 

“If they really wanted you back— If you’ve gone rogue and they wanted to put the leash back on, why wouldn’t they drug you? It’d just give you another reason to stay.”

“Maybe they didn’t have the drugs in the truck,” Bucky’s voice is steel.

“And they believed you when you said you needed that pill bottle.”

“Yeah,” Bucky’s lip curls, “They did.”

Steve feels anger stirring and before he can reroute it, the words spill, “When did you go through everyone’s bags?”

Bucky laughs at that, “You mean when did I repack them all? So we could carry weapons in and out of international airports?”

“You had a better look than that,” Steve narrows his eyes in turn, “You knew exactly what antidotes I had in the bag from SHIELD. You knew that pill bottle was a tracker.”

“Yeah and it saved two lives. Hers and mine.” Bucky bites, head turning away in disgust, “So fuck off. You wanted me to wait till you were dead?”

Steve’s body loses itself again. He’s rocking on a boat, shifting with plane turbulence, swaying in a car seat. Natasha’s boots come scuffing up behind Steve before he can reply.

She cleans Bucky’s wrist with iodine and grips his forearm firmly, “Ready?”

He nods.

Natasha re-sets his wrist with one strong tug. Bucky’s head snaps down and his hair covers his face. He doesn’t make a sound. They all sit silently for a beat. When Bucky looks up, his upper lip is still drawn up. Natasha starts to bandage the wound and Steve stands. He picks the lock on the car to his right with a pocket knife. By the time he’s hot-wired the ignition, Natasha is knotting the bandage around Bucky’s arm.

“Get in,” Steve says through the driver’s side window.

“Where are we going?” Sam asks, sliding into the back seat.

“Back to the hotel.”

The car ride back is silent. Bucky sits in the passenger seat, holding his flesh arm with his metal hand. Steve watches the asphalt race under the car’s hood instead of keeping his eyes on the stoplights. He blows through a red light and has to swerve to miss a car rolling into the intersection. No one in the car reacts.

Steve pulls up in front of the hotel and puts the car in park, “Get the bags.”

He waits in the car while the others disappear inside. The air conditioning coming through the vents makes Steve’s skin feel stretched thin. It dries out his eyes when he forgets to blink. 

Sam comes back out the lobby’s sliding doors first. He’s carrying Steve’s bag too. He tosses them both in the car’s trunk and gets back in the car. Bucky comes next, carrying his bag and Natasha’s. The car sways a little when they settle back into their seats.

Steve puts the car back in gear and pulls out onto the road. He keeps his eyes straight ahead.

Sam is the first to speak when Steve takes the exit, “So… airport?”

“Yeah.”

Steve drives straight up to the terminal and parks at the curb. He tugs apart the wiring to kill the engine and shoves it back into the steering column. Steve steps out of the car and closes the door. He pulls his bag from the trunk and walks through the airport doors. He hears the others shifting canvas and closing doors behind him as he walks out of earshot. 

Steve makes it all the way to the ticketing desks before Sam catches up, “Where are we going?”

Steve spins. His chest flushes hot and frustrated and he lets the burn push his arms into the air. “We’re done,” he spits.

Sam’s chin lifts, eyebrows drawn.

“It’s over. Go wherever the fuck you want.”

Steve turns around and heads for the nearest ticketing desk. He doesn’t bother to check what airline it’s for. Eyes scan the Upcoming Departures screen behind the agent’s head.

“Hey,” Sam’s arm on his shoulder, “Steve.”

Steve rips his shoulder away from Sam’s touch and stops. He breathes hard once, eyes on the floor, and turns around.

“Is this what you want?” Sam’s eyes are steady.

“Is what,” Steve’s voice is too stiff for questions.

“You want to go home?”

Bucky and Natasha have caught up now. They step in on either side of Sam and set their bags down. A huddle of four in the middle of the airport’s expansive hall. Travelers wheel their luggage around the obstruction to reach the end of the ticketing line.

“Yeah. I want you to go home. All of you.” Steve meets each of their eyes in turn. No one looks surprised but they do drop his gaze like they’d rather not see whatever’s in Steve eyes.

“Okay,” Sam nods. “Nat?” He holds out his arms. Natasha looks up, glances at Steve, and steps forward into the hug. She pats his back and breathes in. 

Sam pulls away and opens his arms again, “Bucky?”

Bucky comes forward without hesitation. He claps Sam on the back with his metal hand.

Sam backs up and turns to Steve. He opens his arms wordlessly. Steve stares at him, emotion raging in his chest, chin tucked and eyes lowered. He looks down at the floor. 

Sam steps in to him instead. With Sam’s arms around his back, Steve brings his arms up and returns the gesture. The closeness wracks a horrible quake up his spine and his eyes fill with water. Steve blinks twice and leans back. Sam lets him go.

“You’ve still got the temporary IDs, right? From the Embassy?” Natasha asks quietly. Sam nods. He sets down his bag and pulls them out. “I altered the files. They’ll get you on any U.S.-bound flight. No ticket needed.” Natasha speaks with her face toward the cards in Sam’s hand. 

Sam hands Steve his ID and tucks his own in his pocket. He heaves his bag onto his shoulder and takes two steps back. The gap in their small circle suddenly feels like a vacuum. Steve watches him raise an open hand, “Take care. Ya’ll know where I live. Obviously.” Natasha huffs a tiny laugh, “So drop by for sausages and oatmeal some time.” He points at Bucky, “I’ll have the pan ready for you.” Bucky swats his arm dismissively with a small smile.

Sam drops his hand, turns his back, and rounds the corner toward the security checkpoint.

Steve looks at the floor. He feels Natasha and Bucky shifting on their feet. He hears her say something in Russian and listens to his quiet reply. Steve looks up to see her wrap her arms around his back. He presses his metal hand flat between her shoulder blades and ducks his head. She whispers something and Bucky whispers back. Steve sees his lips move but can’t pick up the sound. Bucky keeps his head down when she steps back. 

Natasha picks up her bag and turns to Steve. She steps in and hugs him. Steve hugs her back and wishes he had something to say. He holds her silently and catches her eyes when she pulls back. Natasha’s voice is quiet, “We’re letting you go. Don’t let that trust go to waste.”

Steve swallows. His chest pulls in on itself. He nods. 

Natasha walks away. She doesn’t look back.

Steve turns his gaze to Bucky, when Natasha has disappeared from view, to find Bucky watching him. The air conditioned terminal suddenly feels cold, its air prickly. 

They stare at each for a long minute. Steve can’t pick a single clear emotion from the look in Bucky’s eyes. He studies the shadowed blue and the creases of his skin, ones he’s come to expect, until he can’t look anymore. Steve drops his eyes to the tile. 

Bucky picks up his bag and walks away. Steve turns and watches his shoulders, the familiar rise and fall of his boots, the loose hang of hair over the back of his neck. Bucky rounds the corner and Steve is alone.

Steve lifts his bag onto his shoulder. He tucks his ID card into his pants pocket and follows the path toward security. A woman with three black rolling bags rustles by. Steve reaches the end of the long line in front of the checkpoint. He can see the top of Sam’s head near the front of the line but no sign of Natasha or Bucky.

Steve stops. His head falls back a touch on his neck. He scans the crowd again and turns around. Steve walks back across the spacious hall and follows a black sign with white symbols toward the restrooms.

The nearest Men’s room is down a long hallway with two right turns. Steve follows the dim path all the way to the restroom’s open doorway. The fluorescents over the sink buzz in his ears. Steve braces straight arms on the sink edge and drops his head. 

He stands still, staring at the floor.

Steve waits for the anger to drain. He sits out the stubborn blooms of frustration in his chest. He closes his eyes and wills the static in his mind to settle. Feeling empty, Steve turns on the faucet and splashes lukewarm water on his face. The water gets warmer and warmer until he shuts it off and moves to the next faucet over.

He dries his face on a thin paper towel and breathes into the damp paper smell. Steve holds still. He drops the paper towel in the trash and walks back into the hall.

“I don’t want to do this Steve.”

Steve’s head snaps up to see Natasha leaning against the carpeted wall.

“But it seems like you can’t figure out how to back up. So hear me out.”

Steve’s eyes go to the brilliant red sheen of her hair under the ceiling’s lights.

“Let’s say Hydra fed him this story just to get to you. If Hydra could, they’d make it so he could never see the truth. Right? Ideally?”

Steve nods numbly. His fingers are still wet.

“So let’s say they did it. And it worked perfectly. They built a perfect alternate history with no mistakes and made him memorize it. Then set him on you.”

Steve watches her shift her jaw. Her eyes look sad.

“Then so what? He’s still here. And he trusts you. Maybe Bucky is gone but you have the opportunity to help the man who’s still alive. He’s living with a hell he can’t escape, and nothing,” Natasha’s eyes flicker, “we have done out here, has helped him find a way past it.”

Steve’s eyes fall to her shoulders. He studies the point where a few strands of her hair wisp out away from her collar. He asks, “And if it’s true?”

Steve doesn’t lift his eyes and Natasha doesn’t move. Steve can hear the buzzing of the bathroom fluorescents from here. He can feel his tired lungs letting air swim in and out instead of coaxing it along. His knees are killing him. His whole body itches, trying to heal all over, and it’s making his shoulders draw in with nausea.

Natasha’s voice is hushed, “It could be both. If Hydra has really been training you since birth, then wouldn’t bringing him back from the dead to tell you all this, fight beside you, break into these labs— Wouldn’t that be the ultimate test?”

Natasha lets her words hang. She turns and walks back toward the terminal. Steve listens to her footsteps until they disappear. He turns back toward the bathroom and freezes. Bucky is standing behind him.

“So you can’t trust me because you think Hydra fucked with my head. But you know Hydra fucked with her head. And you still trust her.” Bucky’s voice bristles.

“I know her.”

“And you don’t know me?” Bucky steps in, chin ducking so his eyes are shadowed, “What the fuck? What have I been doing since I showed up? What do I have to do? You want more dead bodies? Should I keep a fucking tally for you?” Bucky snarls, head tilting, “What would that prove? Who can you trust if not the man you’ve known your entire life?”

Steve stands his ground and lets Bucky lean in. He says, “You are not that man.”

Bucky stops in his tracks. A sickening pause and he says, “Yeah. You’re right. I’m the Winter Soldier.” Bucky’s eyes flicker from hurt to hurtful, “I’m darker than you can deal with and I don’t give a shit if you see it now. I don’t need your fucking blessing.”

“I don’t believe you are. You don’t have to be,” Steve’s voice is soft. For once, it sounds like a statement, not an argument.

“Then say it to my face,” Bucky shoves his shoulders, “The way you mean it. You don’t believe _me_. I fought my way out of there for you,” Bucky’s forehead is pressed to Steve’s, so close their eyes can’t focus on each other, “To give you this,” Steve can hear his teeth click together, “And you don’t believe me.”

Steve locks his neck, pushing against Bucky’s head with his own, “It is _not_ about _you_.”

Breathing hard, heads pressed together. Steve feels that sickening sprawl of emotion down his arms that tells him to take a swing. He grits his teeth, “There are people— Brave, strong, proud people who have followed Captain America. There are kids who look up to me, who need a hero. Captain America is a symbol of everything we can—”

“But you don’t do it for them,” Bucky backs up, making Steve lean back to keep his balance, “You do it for you. You didn’t take the serum for them, so you could be a role model. You agreed because _you_ wanted to serve. Because it was the _right_ thing to do.”

“Yes,” Steve bites, “It was—”

“And you know you learned right from wrong in those back alley fights. Your mother never reprimanded you for bloody knuckles when you _earned_ them defending someone else. I know you inside and out. I watched them build you.” Bucky’s expression is sour, “What do you really stand for? You run around in the stars and stripes of a country that thinks it owns you. Why? You think you’re idealist…”

“What are you saying?”

“Drop the act. You’re not on stage anymore. Do good if you want to, but figure out why the fuck you do it and put that goddamn shield away. Not like you’ve ever been defensive when you had the chance to strike first,” his upper lip curls.

“Bucky,” Steve inhales, looking down, “I think you’re looking for your own— retribution through me. I had a choice and you didn’t. I chose to become this.”

Bucky pulls away completely, standing with his back against the opposite wall, “That’s the worst part. You didn’t have a choice. You never had a choice. You’re just like me,” Bucky wipes the back of his hand over his mouth, “Whored out to the world, made into a tool. But you don’t know it,” he raises a hand in a half-hearted gesture, “Can’t you see we’re doing the exact same thing? Shaking each other, trying to wake the other up? You have no idea what it feels like to be in my position. Because you think I’m a pawn but I _know_ you are.”

The narrow hallway space feels like it’s shrinking. The air seems to compress itself inside Steve’s ears. His composure breaks and his eyes begin to well. He shakes his head, biting his lip against the tightness in his chest, “I’m so sorry, Buck,” He holds Bucky’s eyes even though his vision is blurry with tears, “I’m so sorry they did this to you.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” Bucky says as he takes a step forward. “Don’t fucking apologize. You’re still playing by their rules. I don’t want to hear you’re sorry. I want to see you walk away. If it’s not enough for you, to see your past for what it is, to know they shaped you, then walk away for what you can still change. You’re a symbol and you’re not in control of what that symbol means.”

“Then maybe I need to work harder on making sure the world knows who Captain America really is.”

“Yeah, eliminate every corrupt power. Strike first, before someone can claim they gave you the orders. Perfect. Why don’t you show the world that doing the right thing means hurting the people closest to you?”

Steve’s head tips back. Tears find new paths down his face.

“If you’re serious you know where to start,” Bucky doesn’t look angry or sad, just tired, “SHIELD.”

Steve’s heart drops from its post.

“You read the letters. You heard Fury’s weak excuses. You know they’re riddled full of holes and Hydra agents. Hydra and SHIELD built those helicarriers hand-in-hand after all.”

Steve throws himself forward and shoves Bucky to the wall with wild eyes. He has an arm across Bucky’s throat, bearing down on his airway.

“Go in—” Bucky coughs, voice raspy, “guns blazing. Why don’t you show us all what the right thing looks like and wipe them out—” his eyes are narrow and vicious but he doesn’t push Steve away.

“Why would you _say that_ ,” Steve yells, voice spiking with urgency.

“Show the world that Captain America won’t let a threat grow unchecked. Show them he can think for himself— doesn’t need someone to give him orders—”

“WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT,” Steve roars in his face, voice cracking, furious and panicked. He shoves Bucky to the wall again and the plaster cracks behind his head. “That is exactly what Hydra would want you to say,” He shakes Bucky’s shoulders violently, “Why can’t you see it? Why can’t you see—”

Steve abruptly lets go and takes his head in his hands. “Oh god,” Steve’s knees finally give out and he hits the floor. “What did I do to you, Buck—” Steve gasps out a sob, “I’m so sorry. I’m so—”

Bucky stands over him for a minute. He slides down the opposite wall and sits in a crouch with his arms on his knees. He waits while the panic thrashes its way out of Steve’s chest in gasping sobs. Steve keeps his eyes closed. He holds a hand to his sternum like he can steady himself from the outside.

“Why are you so stuck on this being a Hydra mission?” Bucky speaks quietly, almost to himself, his voice sounds raw, “What does it matter? If it was, they’d have sent me to get you to stop. And if it wasn’t, I’d have come after you to get you to stop anyway. I still think for myself, no matter what they made me.”

Steve says nothing and Bucky asks the suffocating hallway, “Why can’t you just walk away?”

Steve presses his fingertips to his eyes and talks to his hands, “Don’t tell me it doesn’t feel better to have a mission.” His voice is muffled and wet, “To know it all means something.”

Bucky is quiet. Steve listens to his own ragged breathing in the gap before Bucky speaks, “It does feel better. To know what you’re doing. Doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do.”

Steve won’t raise his head. He tries to pull his face back to something calmer.

“I think this is it,” Bucky says, voice nearly a whisper, “I think this is all I can do.” Bucky pushes up onto his feet.

Steve looks up, “Where are you going?” A lurch in his stomach that he didn’t feel when Bucky walked away the first time.

“Somewhere I haven’t been before.” Bucky walks past Steve and down the hall toward the terminal. He pauses at the corner, “Give me a call when I can’t find your number in the phone book anymore.” Bucky turns the corner. He’s silent the moment he’s out of sight. There aren’t even footsteps to listen to.

Steve looks at his boots. Alone again and he feels like he can’t catch his breath. Steve stands, feeling lightheaded. He keeps a hand against the wall as he walks back toward the terminal.

Steve pauses when he walks out into the sunlit space. He scans the crowd. His chin is up even if his ankles feel like they’re water instead of bone. Steve makes his way through the security checkpoint and turns toward the gates.

He doesn’t have to go far. Gate 3B. New York City via Atlanta. Boarding now. Steve hands his ID to the gate agent. She scans it and gives him a nod.

Steve walks straight down the jetway with his bag in hand. It’ll take up an entire overhead compartment but no one asks him to check it. It smells like jet fuel and bottled air.

 A flight attendant meets Steve at the front of the plane with a courteous smile. Her eyes stutter over his face. She leads him the last seat in the first class cabin and waits silently while he shoves his bag in the bin. Steve sinks into the seat, bracing himself for—

“I’m sorry,” she starts with a growing smile, “but are you— Captain America?”

Steve tries to smile but his mouth twists, “Yes ma’am.”

“Oh my goodness,” she beams, pressing a hand to her chest, “My sister’s little girl just loves you. Could I get an autograph for her?”

Steve nods, trying to keep his face neutral.

The flight attendant pushes past the people waiting in the aisle, opens a compartment by the cockpit, and starts digging through a black travel bag. She pulls out a folded piece of paper and a pen and pushes back to Steve.

“She, uh—” the flight attendant’s eyes fall, “She’s been struggling with acute lymphoblastic leukemia for a little over a year now and we’re always telling her—” The woman sets the paper in Steve’s lap. It’s a child’s drawing of Captain America with an adult’s neat print above it, _The Captain says, “Take your medicine so you can get better!”_ “We’re always telling her about how you had to take medicine when you were younger, before the serum. And that she can grow up to be strong like you if she—” the woman’s voice wavers for a second, “helps her body get better now.”

Steve nods and asks, “What’s her name?”

“Olympia.”

Steve takes a pen from her and writes, _Keep fighting Olympia. Your pal, Steve Rogers._ The last g loops too large, crossing over both the o and e of his last name.

“Thank you so much,” the woman gathers the paper and pen, grinning broadly at Steve. He nods and smiles back by pressing his lips together.

 

* * *

 

Ocean miles flying by below. The sun sets and rises again. Steve doesn’t sleep.

He draws a map of a nearly forgotten car ride on the back of the magazine from the seat back pocket. Steve draws a single line in ball-point pen until he reaches an intersection that doesn’t make sense. And starts the map again.

When he finishes the route, Steve rips the back cover off, folds it, and tucks it in his pocket.

 

* * *

 

Steve is escorted off the plane first and directly to a private customs screening room. He sets his bag on the inspection table and starts to take off his jacket. The inspector just waves him through with a nod and a knowing, “Captain.”

The air conditioning in the airport is pumping out air so cold that Steve has to zip his jacket closed while he waits in line at the departure gate. He gets whisked away again as soon as the gate agent sees his face.

The flight to New York is only a couple of hours but feels just as long as the flight from South Africa. Steve passes the time with his eyes closed. He can feel the sun setting again outside his window. His heart burrows deeper into his chest and Steve grits his teeth absently. His chest hitches on remembered conversations and his stomach knots itself again and again.

When the plane touches down at JFK, Steve opens his eyes. He pulls his bag from the overhead bin when the other passengers are shuffling for their luggage and tugs out a curved brim cap. He pulls it low over his eyes and keeps his head down as he makes his way to the terminal. 

It smells humid and grimy. Steve watches his feet lead him to the train that will take him into the city.

 

* * *

 

Steve stops to buy a soft cloth bag meant to carry canvases. He tucks his shield inside and slings it over his shoulder.

 

* * *

 

“I need to send this.”

“Okay,” the man behind the counter pulls out a half-sheet of colored paper, “How soon do you need it to get there?”

“Doesn’t matter.” It’s three in the morning and Steve feels just as tired as every person in this store looks.

“FedEx Ground okay?”

“Yeah,” Steve pulls a thick pack of folded bills from his pocket, “How much?”

“Do you want us to pack it?”

“No, just send it like this,” Steve nudges the edge of his dusty duffel further onto the counter. He starts filing in the form.

“What’s the zip code?”

“22203.”

“It’ll be $86.46.”

Steve hands the man the completed form and counts out $90 in bills. He tucks the rest of the money deep into the bag, under the cluster of five metal boxes.

“Here’s your $3.54,” the man extends a downturned hand to give Steve his change.

“Thanks.”

Steve pulls out his map as he walks out the door. The shield is a familiar weight on his back. He begins to follow his crude map.

Steve moves through the city with a familiar urgency to his steps. The sidewalk is lonely but not deserted. He lets the people who pass in front of him set his pace. Steve keeps his hands in his pockets when he’s not looking at the map. He can’t remember the last time he slept and his feet ache so badly he feels like he’s floating above them. 

He reaches the end of the map faster than he expected. Steve comes to a stop in front of a boarded up store front. The lighting in the street is poor and Steve has to step closer to check the number over the door.

He kneels and peers through a gap in the boards nailed across the windows. Steve’s hand shakes where he steadies himself against the sidewalk. He glances down the street both ways before snaking two fingers up under the lowest board and jerking it free. Steve pulls off three more boards, smashes the already cracked window with his elbow, and steps through the gap.

 

 


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello readers! Please heed the new tag for Suicide Attempt.

* * *

  
_The asset understands he is valuable. He will not take his own life._  
 

* * *

 

Fire roars in an enclosed space. 

It’s nothing like a flickering flame or even a campfire. Not even like the industrial incinerator, with its gas-fueled burners. Every lick and crackle carries menace. Beneath the light and smoke and movement, there’s an ominous whoosh, of air moving from one place to another, of blistering heat eating through oxygen.

Steve blinks against the heat and watches the building burn around him.

All the equipment is exactly where it had been the day of the procedure. All the control panels still intact. The bombed viewing area full of chairs laying askew on the floor. The Vita-Ray chamber has been knocked off its hinges, bending its supports over the years as it reached for the ground.

The fire is working its way around the perimeter, eating through the dried out tile grout to the wood supports underneath. There’s no fuel left in any of the machines but everything is so dry from years of disuse that Steve didn’t have any trouble starting a fire in each corner of the room and three near the center platform.

Steve watches the nearest fire creep closer along the control bank. He’s seated in front of one of the panels, where Howard sat decades ago. Steve leans on the stiff chair back and catches a glimpse of a thin flame winding along the dried out tape holding the wires in place under the metal panel cover.

The huge machines around the perimeter begin to smoke and spark. Steve watches patiently as the paint on their face plates warps and cracks. The air is so thick with smoke and dust that the edges of the room are slowly disappearing from view. Steve’s lungs are drawing shallower and shallower breaths and he fights the urge to cough.

“Hey.”

Steve spins in his seat, looking back toward the entrance stairs. Sam is making his way down the rickety steps with a hand on the wall.

Steve’s heart hits his throat. “I thought you were going back to D.C.” Steve calls back.

“Yeah, me too.” Sam reaches the bottom of the stairs and walks toward the center of the room. He climbs the steps onto the central platform, body looking hazy through the heat waves, and walks to where a slim metal box lies open on the ground. He nudges it with his boot.

“You found his box?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

Steve’s face begins to draw closed before he can reply. He pauses to swallow back the growl in his throat and finds himself fighting pressure behind his eyes, tears ready to spill. He says nothing.

Sam crouches over the box. It’s so smoky that Steve can see little more than Sam’s silhouette but he knows Sam is close enough to see the ashes at the bottom of the box. He braces for the questions but they don’t come. They sit in silence and listen to the whoosh.

“You’re gonna burn down the whole block.”

Steve says nothing.

“I know it’s not easy. No big heavy things to crash into the water and use to sink yourself. But taking out a city block? Is that what it’ll take to get the job done?”

Steve spits, angry, “You gonna joke about it? That’s good. You trying to figure out if I’m serious?”

“Are you?”

Steve breathes out in a furious, resigned huff instead of replying. He has to stifle a cough.

“You don’t have to, you know. I know you know that. You don’t owe death to anyone. Ever. That’s not a debt people can owe.”

“I’m doing it for me this time,” Steve’s voice is mean, unanchored, “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Sam is quiet for a minute. “The other thing I know you know, is that all this means whatever you want it to mean.” Steve can hear him moving around on the ground but can’t see him anymore. “Just because you gave it to him once doesn’t mean Uncle Sam always has your number.”

“This isn’t about Uncle Sam. It isn’t about the missions or the work. It’s about the truth.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Sam’s voice is closer now. He’s lower to the ground than Steve and sounds like he’s talking through cloth, “Maybe this is all about something big and noble and distant like the truth. But maybe— you’re just afraid. It’s okay to be afraid. What if, right? What if it’s true and you’re not who you thought you were?”

“It doesn’t matter. Whether all that really happened. The truth—” Steve finally inhales too much smoke and coughs reflexively. He drops forward off the chair and onto his knees into cooler air. “The truth is that Hydra is using me. My image. My story. To do horrible—” Steve chokes, but not on smoke, “And I’m just one man. It’s not enough. I don’t know how to fix it. I’m too late any way.”

Steve rests both hands on the filthy tile floor. Heat arcs over the back of his neck. He stares down at his blackened fingers, “The truth is I can’t live life with the people I want to be with. I can’t stop fighting. I’m ready to go down with the ship but it won’t take me. So I won’t give them the fucking satisfaction,” Steve feels empty from his throat to his hips. He curls forward, chin dipping to his chest.

“The truth, Sam? The truth is that they finally got their fingers in my head. They finally got me because yeah, I am fucking afraid. That it’s all a lie. That I’m moving forward on some track I can’t see. How would I know?” Steve’s voice falls faint on the end of the question. He draws a breath and feels his head spin. His vision starts to flatten and blur. “There is only one way out. I will never let them win.” Steve’s voice is fading.

“That’s what you’re afraid of? Hydra winning? That’s what really matters,” Sam sounds disappointed. His voice is moving closer through the smoke. The ash diffuses the light of the flames and everything seems to be glowing red.

“Yeah it fucking does.” Steve snarls and pain shocks through his head.

“Then die,” Sam’s face suddenly swims into view just six inches from Steve’s. He has his shirt pulled up over his nose and mouth. His eyes are sharp and narrow, “Die again, Steve. Why don’t you see if that does a goddamn thing.” Sam grabs his arm and jerks Steve backward. Steve’s vision dims and settles again, he lets himself be pulled. “Isn’t that exactly what they want?”

Sam coughs into his shoulder and pulls Steve roughly down the stairs off the main platform. The air is noticeably cooler and clearer just a foot lower in the room. He continues, “Now _I_ don’t give a damn what ‘they’ want. You can’t make choices based on what others want. You have to decide for you. You are a person.” Sam hooks both arms under Steve’s arms and drags him backward. “You have a life. The world is not ending. I think your tour of duty is over. It’s time to go home.”

Sam pulls Steve all the way back to the wall in front of the staircase to the exit. Steve lets himself be dragged. Fingers drag tracks through the dirt on the floor. Boots knock side to side like he’s already deadweight.

“I know it’s not easy,” Sam slumps beside him against the wall, “You’re supposed to look forward to coming home. Being back in the real world, friends and family, normal life. But it’s not as noble, is it? Especially if the war isn’t over. You’re a soldier; how do you make your peace with just living?” Sam coughs hard and draws a slow, strained breath.

Steve can feel ash in his throat. His eyes are burning and there’s sweat rolling down his face, settling into the creases around his eyes. He pants polluted air through an open mouth and lets the searing pain in his head dig deeper.

Sam pulls his shirt off his face and leans forward to say to Steve’s face, “You’re good. Doesn’t matter who made you.” He wipes his eyes with the inside of his shirt, “Maybe we can’t win but we can sure as hell lose. The world’s worse off without you. Not worse off without Captain America. Worse off without you. Steven Grant Rogers.”

“You should leave,” Steve’s voice barely rises about the crackle of the flames. Above them, a long series of cracks echo through the rafters. Steve reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out the red pamphlet, and tosses it into the red haze in front of him.

“I don’t think I should,” Sam sinks lower on the wall, chin touching his chest, “I think I’m right where I need to be.

Steve reaches toward Sam to shove him closer to the stairs and Sam catches his wrist, “You think you’re the only one who feels like he was made to be a weapon from day one?” They stare at each other through the smoke. Urgency rises in Steve’s chest and he reaches for Sam’s collar. “I grew up in a town of 12,000 in middle-of-nowhere Louisiana. If you didn’t give a shit, you worked on the oil rig. If you wanted out, you joined the army.” Sam pulls back hard on Steve’s hand and their faces swing close. His eyes are angry and bright through the smoke, “I always knew I was going to join up. And when we went to war after 9/11, I knew where I’d be going. You know what it was like? To grow up like that? To have teachers nodding at you in elementary school like ‘Yeah, that one, he could do it. He might just be able to make it out.’”

Sam’s lungs wheeze with his next breath, “No matter who taught it to you or when they beat it into your head, somebody made you believe service was the _only_ way,” Sam’s voice has grown hoarse, “The only _right_ choice for a little guy that owed the world his life.”

Steve pushes away. He starts to crawl away from Sam on his knees, back toward the platform, back toward the fire. Sam catches his shirt hem and pulls hard. Steve’s shirt collar digs into his neck.

“Nobody carries the weight of the world on their shoulders,” Sam yells from behind him, “Not even you. They’re gonna be just fine without you. The world won’t fall apart with one less oversimplified symbol.”

“That’s selfish,” Steve says over his shoulder. His own voice sounds foreign and distant in his ears.

“And who taught you that taking care of yourself, of figuring out what you want to do and how you want to do it, was selfish?” Sam barks. 

Steve gives in to the tug and Sam’s grip pulls him backward again. He collapses against the wall as the roof rafter finally gives in. It crashes down on the control panel, a line of fire. The impact is deafening. Sam yells over the metal twisting, “And so what if it is? Who taught you selfish was wrong?”

Steve reaches out through the smoke toward Sam. 

“Maybe you got more than you thought you deserved. And maybe now you’re realizing that gift’s not what you thought it was,” Steve finds Sam’s shoulder and works his way up to his head, feeling along because he can’t open his eyes to the smoke, “Maybe you’re not entirely your own man. So what.”

Steve finds Sam’s face and slides his head around the back of his neck, he pulls Sam close, opening his eyes and drawing a breath for a final order. His vision splits into black spots as he inhales.

“ _You can still feel_ ,” Sam yells right into face. He’s trying to hold Steve’s eyes through the ash, “ _You can still want. You’re alive right now. What do you want?_ ”

 

 


	22. Chapter 22

* * *

  
_The asset believes he holds his own destiny in his hands._   


* * *

  
Steve drops his hand from Sam’s neck to his upper back. He drags one knee under his body and his torso keels to the side, knocking his head against the wall. One hand shoots up reflexively and Steve pushes against it to stand. 

He pulls Sam forward and forces him up the stairs first. Steve demands his legs climb the stairs, searing heat and screaming pain. He’s panting through an open mouth with his eyes closed. The colors swirling when he opens his eyes mean no more than the ones that spark when he closes them.

The heat builds with every step until Steve feels like his skin is on fire and it smells overwhelmingly of singed hair. Sam runs down the blackened hall, making his way past barriers and collapsed walls that can no longer be seen. Steve follows, head down. Every step away from the lab clears the air a little more. Sam reaches the boarded up front window first and ducks through the gap. Steve snakes his first leg through, bends at the waist, and swings his body back outside. 

His lungs gasp in fresh air reflexively, uncontrollably. They draw in and in and in before Steve coughs forcefully to push the air out again. He hits the sidewalk and rests forward on his knees and elbows. Steve tries to lift his head but exhaustion forces it down again. He rolls to one side and draws a foot up underneath him. One hand on the building’s brick and he rises over a shaky leg. Steve looks up at Sam, coughing hard with hands on his knees, and shrugs the bag off his back.

He unzips it and pulls out his shield. Sam tilts his head to look over at Steve. A quiet moment passes. Steve’s head is light, swimming for the clouds, and he can hear a fire engine’s siren a couple of blocks away.

He lays the shield down against the boarded up window, “Can you figure out— what to do with this? No obligation. You’ve already done your time too.”

Sam nods.

Steve lifts his hand instinctively for a small salute, but catches it halfway to his head and drops it again. He nods and turns away. 

The street is broad and washed in blue. Steve walks along the edge of the sidewalk. His feet feel like they’ve cracked open. His body tenses around its pain but his head is clear. Steve draws a deep breath of cool morning air and lets the gesture tip his head back.

He walks for blocks with his eyes on the sky. The sun will rise soon. His vision is still hazy, like the world is thick with mist. Steve keeps his hands in his pockets. The city smells like rainwater and diesel exhaust. Steve’s lungs feel tight and sandy, but begin to ease the farther he walks. His spine feels like a thread, just holding his weightless head above his body.

He walks until he finds himself in front of a hospital. Steve looks through the sliding glass Emergency Room doors at a waiting room full of people curled in their chairs. He drags the back of his hand over his mouth.

“You need some help?” A quiet voice from over his shoulder.

Steve turns to see an older man in a worn black cap and denim jacket looking him over. Steve looks down at his filthy clothes and shaking hands. He shakes his head once, “I’m okay.”

“You wanna get a second opinion?” The man’s voice is low and rough but not unfriendly.

Steve huffs a laugh and his eyebrow cocks up. “I already know what they’re going to say. I just need a cup of coffee and a couple hours of sleep.”

The older man nods. He shrugs under his jacket, “Let me get you that cup of coffee.”

Steve holds his eyes a second. “Alright, thank you.”

He follows the man through the hospital’s main entrance and into the 24-hour Starbucks in the lobby. 

Steve takes two napkins from the dispenser by the pitcher of cream and wipes some of the ash from his face. He sits at a table by the door and the man joins him a moment later with two big cups of black coffee. Steve can see his face better in the lobby’s light. He has a grey mustache that covers his mouth, letting his eyes do the talking. 

Steve takes his cup with a nod of thanks. He pulls off the lid and the older man does the same. Steve blows the rising steam off the surface before taking a sip. The coffee laps hot at the roof of his mouth and Steve’s ashy tastebuds can only pick out a toasted flavor, but he closes his eyes all the same. Steve swallows and breathes out.

Soft hum of hospital efficiency. Shoes scuffing the polished tile, phone ringing in faint choruses of calming tones, quiet conversation. Steve lets the sounds in. 

The older man opens a newspaper. Steve looks out the doorway at the hospital’s main entrance. He watches people in wheelchairs crane their necks to talk to the people steering them forward. His eyes drift to the tiny of patch of sky he can see through the glass, between the buildings. The blue is so bright it’s shifting from color to colorless light. Somewhere out of sight, the sun has risen.

Steve takes another sip of his coffee and his eyes catch on a headline, _Grimsen Manufacturing Lineage Ends in Bankruptcy_. Steve can read the tiny text, even across the table. He tilts his head slightly for a better angle.

_Grimsen Manufacturing shuttered its doors today after 104 years in business. For the company’s first 35 years, Harold Grimsen and his sons Charles and Alvin, ran a small steel foundry from the shores of the Hudson River. It was not until the wartime demands of the 1940s that the founding family expanded into firearm manufacturing, which became their primary business by 1948. The first Grimsen pistol was issued to officers serving in the South Pacific in the spring of 1942, and later to—_

Steve’s eyes snap up, his heart hits the back of his spine. He jumps and his hands fly to his front pants pocket, only to find it empty. Of course, his phone is tucked into a bag headed for Virginia. The older man is watching him now. Steve clears his throat and says, “Any way I could beg that front page off of you?”

The man nods without a word and hands it over.

“Thanks,” Steve takes the crinkled paper, digs into his pocket, and dumps $3.54 on the table with his free hand. “And thanks for the coffee!” he blows out into the hospital lobby before the man can protest.

Steve jogs out the hospital’s sliding doors and into the street. A smile stretches, irrepressible, on his face. Steve reaches the sidewalk and turns right. He takes one end of the paper in each hand and lifts it to the sky. He shakes it and lifts it and laughs. Too loud, so happy.

Then he lets go. Simply lets the paper slip from between his fingers and drift back on the breeze. He keeps walking, arms falling into a natural swing. Steve reaches the end of the block and turns the corner without looking back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!!!!! Feedback of any and all flavors is welcomed and much appreciated! Drop me a comment here or over on tumblr if you like! ^.^

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Come chat with me on tumblr! notoska.tumblr.com


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